While winning the fly-off was a challenge in itself, being able to successfully mount a defence of their title is something entirely different, and we were delighted to catch up with the remaining members of the team and find out what they have been working on so far.
Between Owen and Oliver tuning in from their university workshop and Jonathan from his bedroom office, the team is more spread out than last year, but no less cohesive. While some members from last year’s fly-off-winning team have remained, others have moved on as the new university year. Alumni like Ryan Hewitt have moved on to entry level roles in industry after graduating. In particular, Jonathan is in the middle of a working placement for a notable offshore engineering organisation and works with the team on their UAS in his spare time.
As for new incoming talent to replace outgoing team members, this was expectedly straightforward. “After we got back to campus last year, we organised a stand at our Freshers Fayre for the first time,” explained Oliver, the team’s leader. “We were surprised in the interest and took around 75 signups from interested students and while not all of them stuck around, we eventually ended up with lots of new people to join us.”
Key to this was the “Design, Make, Fly” events they ran, where Oliver and the existing team showed prospective team members how to build and fly a basic UAV, which got them thinking about some of the technical challenges involved in putting a UAS together. “After that we ended up with enough people to run two separate teams, so ours is formed of final year winners from last year and first year students,” he continued, “while the other team is formed entirely of third year students. Because they also have several students who are returning from placements, they have plenty of experience to bring to their 2022 UAS.”
Because of the number of first year students getting involved, the subject of training and passing on knowledge came up early in the process. One of the key things they have been doing this year is working with Qinetiq to benchmark their knowledge sharing sessions and ensure that the team doesn’t lose valuable information when team management transitions to new hands in the 2022/2023 season.
All well and good in terms of team management, but what about the engineering side? As it turns out there is plenty of news to report on: “We’re currently about half-way through the manufacture of our parts, although we are slightly behind in the process” admitted Owen, and there has been plenty of work elsewhere outside of UAS construction that should improve on their performance.
The first area is their avionics core: while they were the only team to carry out a successful autonomous flight last year, the team know they will have to step up this year with the increased number of teams taking part. “Last year we tended to buy the most expensive boards we could get, which often had a lot of sensors and gyros that we didn’t end up using,” Oliver admitted. “This year we’ve gone with much simpler solutions that not only come in under budget but have also been working a lot better so far.”
Alongside the autonomous systems, the image recognition part of the event is also a key consideration for the team this year. “We really underestimated the amount of work we needed to get both the autonomous systems and camera working together,” they explained. “While last year we focused on getting the autonomous flight working, this year we’ve started earlier and have been building on our knowledge, updating our code base and adding a light sensor to dynamically calibrate the camera’s exposure and score some extra points.”
Third on their list is the assembly time, something that they have approached in a few different ways. “Last year’s UAS definitely took us much longer to put together than we realised” admitted Jonathan sheepishly, “but we’ve been taking on the feedback from the scrutineers seriously to make some improvements. First is minimising loose connections that UAS suffered from in 2021. Second are the addition of clips to attach the tail and wings to the fuselage: “whether we’re putting it together on the flight line or we have to replace some parts of the UAS after a crash, we’ll hopefully save a lot of time” outlined Owen proudly. Between better connectors and more modular, hot-swappable parts, all these will go some way to shortening the time to assemble their UAS.
Finally, changes from their conventional design in 2021 should yield greater dividends in terms of control and flight time, with an A shaped tail used to reduce aerodynamic drag. Meanwhile, a push prop configuration and reverse thrust capabilities should make landing more manageable, with the team citing the windy conditions and sloped runway last year as “challenging”. “Combining all these upgrades should allow us to land in the 10x10m landing box, which we’re concentrating on this year,” finished Owen, intending to maximise their points in any area they can.
However, what the team are most looking forward to is the chance to see the new line up of teams at the fly off this year: “It was great to see the entries last year and this year should be even better, with more teams to chat with and see what they have been working on in the hanger,” said Owen, who is particularly excited to see what some of the international teams will be bringing. More teams also brings more competition, however the team seem confident that their UAS will secure the fly-off trophy for a second year.
Hopefully we can catch up with Team Peryton’s sister team Team Atlantis in the next few weeks, however in the meantime, be sure to follow their progress as we get closer to the flyoff on their website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram channels. Thanks again to Oliver, Owen and Jonathan for sharing their team’s progress and for the photo updates, best of luck for their title defence this July.