Comprised of around a dozen final year students at the University of Surrey, the members of Team Peryton Atlantis bring a wealth of engineering knowledge and capabilities to the table, both from their time at university and industrial placements. However, they lack the experience of competing at the UAS Challenge that current fly-off winners Team Peryton Heron enjoy, which somewhat evens the playing field. While comparisons with previous winners are inevitable, Atlantis feel that have what it takes and have undertaken a comprehensive design of their UAS to bring home silverware.
“We want to maximise our points because frankly, we are in it to win” says team member Lizzie in a rather matter-of-fact introduction in the first minutes of our MS Teams call. Front and centre of the camera surrounded by a handful of her teammates, it’s a clear statement of intent from the team and proof of the confidence they have in their work so far. Having already prepared a detailed presentation they recently made to the university as part of their course, the team are eager to show their hard work, infused with plenty of videos, photos and even the odd appropriate meme thrown in for good measure.
Nicknamed Atlas, presumably after the first king of Atlantis according to Plato, the team have designed and developed a hybrid fixed wing craft with VTOL capabilities, featuring a monocoque construction, an innovative cross-shaped tail and front mounted tractor propeller. Bringing the best of both worlds for the flying events, the immediate advantages of Atlas are obvious; having full wings will help to minimise time on certain flight missions while being able to hover will increase the accuracy of the landing and package drop.
Speaking of the package drop, the team have already been busy around campus finding gantry ways to test the AirDropBox system and its parachute capabilities, with videos of the failures providing some amusement. Initial data gathering has allowed the team to refine their designs for integrating with Atlas, using some string around the release mechanism that also replaces the base of their fuselage with a cover after release. “With all the other parts of the UAS being quite complex, we want everything else to be relatively simple,” said Lizzie. Trials with a fully laden package have already achieved successful drops, with the next step to test the whole process once their UAS is assembled and airborne.
Propulsion has been a key area of their build, with team member Tom keen to share all the background work that has gone into the choice of their motors. “Physical testing has been a big part of our philosophy this year”, he explained, adding that time in the university’s wind tunnel enabled them to validate the manufacturer-stated performance of their motors and in turn optimise the size and weight of their battery unit to maximise power and flight time, aiming for a 4 m/s climb rat in Horizontal wing-born flight. The use of lighter materials in the construction of their UAS will offset the additional weight of the four VTOL motors, which have been chosen to achieve the 30NM thrust that each motor provides.
Regarding Atlas’ other capabilities for the challenge’s missions, the team have been hard at work. Using ArduPilot, LUA scripting and combining GPS and LIDAR data, Niki has made good progress on the autonomous code for their avionics package, with some fail-safe scripts already being implemented in case their UAS goes off course.
Keen to take advantage of the opportunity to get extra points any way they can, further code has been developed by image recognition wizard Kavin for this specific mission. Covering a multi-stage process to clean up the image, identify the right colour and shape of ground targets and then report its position, successful progress has been made to get a working system in place and the results of live testing in videos look very favourable.
Finally, progress on the container and flight line assembly is going well, with efforts already underway to improve on their current time of five minutes for the team to put Atlas together.
With all parts designed and jigs in place for CNC machines, manufacture of Atlas’ parts is the next key step over the coming reading week and all team members regardless of outstanding dissertations will be all hands on deck to put Atlas together. Emily, head of manufacturing, outlined the variety of different methods they are using in their build, including carbon-fibre-infused 3D Printing for bespoke connections pieces, CFRP tubes provided by Easy Composites for the skeleton, vacuum forming for the nose and some aerodynamic fairings, while laser cut birch plywood from SLEC UK will be used for the fuselage and balsa wood for the wing and tail ribs. There are also some novel material choices, including left-over VK drinks boxes, sourced not only from part time jobs at their student union bar but also from the beverage makers themselves in the most unlikely sponsorship deal that yielded a supply of sustainable materials. By the end of the next fortnight, the team should have enough parts for three separate aircraft; plenty of spare parts for the start of their testing and for the fly off.
Throughout the presentation, the team clearly know what they are doing and appear to have done plenty of research to support their design. However, with flight testing now looming on the horizon there’s an air of anxious anticipation as the team find out whether their UAS is as good on paper as it is in the air, with Lizzie in particular worried that the design won’t work as well as they had hoped. Providing they start testing early enough and with the calibre of teammates who joined the MS Teams chat, the team should be able to put right any shortcomings in time, though it remains to be seen what changes they will need to make ahead of the fly off in July.
Thanks go to all the team members who were able to join and give their time for the interview and best of luck to the team on the build and testing phase of their UAS and be sure to catch up with Team Peryton on their website and social media channels.