The Purdue Aerial Robotics Team IEEE (PARTIEEE) was founded back in 1996 as a committee within the Purdue IEEE Student Organization. The Purdue Aerial Robotics Team mission is to create an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) to compete in the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Student Unmanned Air Systems (AUVSI SUAS) Competition.
Aerial Robotics Captain
Aeromechanical Lead
Aeromechanical Lead
Software Lead
Electrical Lead
Autonomy Lead
The AeroMechanical sub-team of Purdue Aerial Robotics Team designs, builds, and tests a safe, mission effective platform for the AUVSI SUAS competition. The sub-team's goal is to provide team members a worthwhile, modern experience on aircraft design. The team has a strong emphasis on system design and manufacturing practicality. A rigorous engineering approach is applied from structures and propulsion, with training to provide any necessary skills to students of all skill and experience levels. FEA and CFD techniques are utilized along with traditional analysis and testing. Our designs are built around expertise in composites manufacturing, supported by precise 3D printed molds, to provide an efficient airframe while mirroring the ongoing changes in the industry.
The electrical sub-team of PARTIEEE is responsible for designing and implementing the plane's
embedded hardware and software systems. The goals of this sub-team are to develop a safe,
efficient system capable of navigating and collecting data about its surrounding
environment with minimal human intervention. Much of the work done by the electrical
sub-team involves both hardware and software and falls into the areas of communications,
flight controls, and autonomy.
Current projects include the development of custom flight control software, radio communications
between the aircraft and its ground station, telemetry sensor data collection, creation of
autonomous flight algorithms, and mission simulation design to rapidly validate and improve
existing navigation algorithms. To accomplish these tasks, the plane is outfitted with various
sensors including an IMU, airspeed sensor, and GPS, among others. It's software is written
in C and Python.
The electrical sub-team strives to design and implement robust, professional solutions on board
the UAV. We constantly research and improve to allow the UAV to perform to its maximum levels each year.
The software sub-team of PARTIEEE is responsible for designing and
implementing the UAV's computer vision system. The goal of this sub-team is to develop a
robust and accurate system which can identify multiple characteristics of various objects
on the ground with minimal human intervention.
The software sub-team works with image
processing libraries, such as openCV, to filter incoming pictures and extract necessary
data. More recently, the team has also incorporated machine learning libraries to increase
detection accuracy. The team is tasked with identifying targets from the air and numerous
characteristics about these targets including shape, color, alphanumeric values, and location.
Additionally, there exists a communication system between the aircraft camera and the ground
station. The team runs some of its algorithms on board the aircraft, but the majority are
processed on the ground via the communication system.
Our team is committed to pushing the
limits of current technology and computer science. So, the team's current, year-long goal
is to create a computer vision system as well as an image database to identify these
targets with high amounts of accuracy. Our work this year is starting from the ground up
and will set the team up for success for many years to come.