We caught up with Jurgen Rietberg, leader of the University of Twente UAS team from The Netherlands to discuss achievements to date, challenges encountered, and lessons learnt.
Q: Could you briefly tell us about your team – any interesting facts or background information?
Jurgen Rietberg (JR): As a team we consist of eight full-time and around 20 part-time students, from around 10 different courses and nationalities working on various drone related projects; the team working on the UAS Challenge is made up of ten team members.
Q: What is the COVID-19 situation in The Netherlands and how much work were you able to complete before lockdown?
JR: The Netherlands is not on full lockdown and we are still able to conduct some tests, with a maximum of 3 people present and always the same group to prevent cross contamination. Our office is closed and we are working from home to finish building our UAS.
Before the lockdown, we built two prototypes and achieved hover. The plan is to iterate on these, achieve transition and prove full mission capability.
Q: Could you tell us about the design and innovation aspect of your aircraft?
JR: Some of the innovative aspects of our UAS include portability, by making the drone easily attachable and detachable to save storage space, a tilt rotor mechanism to combine VTOL and fixed wing flight, enabling the UAV to take off anywhere, while saving weight in comparison to a quad plane. Another aspect is the usability of the software and landing legs that have a double function as vertical stabilizers to save weight.
We use a combination of 3D printing and thermoforming for fabrication along with standard carbon fibre pultrusions for structural construction. The payload bay is modular, which means we can use different kinds of systems: drop mechanisms, sensor modules etc. The batteries will be side-mounted to make swapping easier.
Q: How could your UAV be used to help vulnerable people and fight against COVID-19?
JR: Assuming we had a fully functioning design, there are plenty of options. We could use our drone in countries with a poor infrastructure to deliver COVID-19 test kits to remote hospitals, or medical support to people who are unable to visit a hospital.
Although the UAV might not be accurate enough for delivery within cities, the concept could definitely be used to deliver food or medicine to members of society who are at a higher risk when contracting COVID-19, e.g. immunocompromised, thereby delivering their food without a potentially infected delivery person ever getting close to their front door. We could also use our drone to transport diagnostic samples, vaccines and medicines between hospitals, testing facilities and to remote medical clinics.
Q: What are the key skills you learnt from this project?
JR: The team dynamic is fantastic, everybody is motivated to bring the project to a positive conclusion.
Key skills vary from person to person, depending on their previous knowledge and specific role within the project group. Some learnt a great deal about aerodynamics, others learnt how to use certain programs, or improved their structural design knowledge. On the less technical side, we learnt about project management, design management, planning and task division, teamwork, while our communication group learnt about approaching companies, negotiating, closing contracts and PR.
Overall, we grasped what it's like to work in a dedicated group, on a large project and where we fit in that group, which I think will be very useful when entering the job market
Q: What are the main challenges your team faced whilst working on this project?
JR: Safety is of high importance and one of the main challenges, both in terms of aircraft and flight safety.
Another challenge was the portability of the drone, since this required us to focus on the assembly and disassembly of the drone during design.
On the software side, the many modules communicating with each other was the main challenge as the ground control station, onboard computer, flight controller and transmitter all had to work in harmony.
The tilt rotor mechanism is both a mechanical and a software challenge, as everything had to be tuned to perfection in order to successfully transition between VTOL and fixed wing flight.
On the management side, distribution of knowledge was challenging too. Our team had a few members with existing UAV experience. Getting the knowledge from the experienced members to the rest of the team efficiently was a major focus point.
Q: Anything else you wish to tell us about?
JR: Despite the current crisis we have ambitious plans for the rest of the year. In collaboration with the foundation Transport 4 Transport, we are planning to visit Malawi to showcase the drone we designed.
The end goal is to set the ground for local collaboration to begin production of drones. This means use and maintenance of humanitarian aid drones capable of delivering food or medicine to remote communities and the creation of aerial maps. We also aim to give workshops on drone technology and explain the use and manufacturing of our aircraft to local drone pilots during our visit. We set up a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for this project
https://tinyurl.com/tkqaq69.