Robert Ross

Engineering Projects - Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

"A small, electric powered drone aircraft which flys itself, takes pictures and gathers data"


My final year Electronic Engineering project consisted of building an Autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicle based on a small electric model aircraft flight platfrom. The control and data logging system performed well, allowing us to accurately log data onboard the aircraft and transmit data back to base over short ranges. The control algorithms were shown to clearly control the flight surfaces of the aircraft and were designed using hardware failsafe manual switchover techniques, but required more fine-tuning and data from a 3-axis gyroscope (not currently fitted) to achieve reliable autonomous flight.


View our Flight Logs
LOG 2 - 19/10/2006
LOG 3 - 20/10/2006
LOG 5 - 22/10/2006
LOG 6 - 24/10/2006

See our great open day poster (PDF file)



Download a copy of our project plan
(1.5MB)

Download our final thesis - awarded best final year engineering thesis
(13.2MB)


Our project featured in the Herald Sun newspaper!

Our project featured in the Age newspaper!


We also made page 2 of the La Trobe University Bulletin


We also made it onto TV


For Up-to-date project details check out my project journal



High quality (2MP) aerial photos - click for larger view



Some older pictures from my plane

Video footage from onboard model plane (~700kB)
Video footage from of model plane from ground (~270kB)