CREATeV Website: Link
Superwake Website: Link
AALF Website: Link
CREATeV (Clean Renewable Energy Aerial Test Vehicle) is a solar-electric aircraft capable of ultra-long duration flight. The current longest flight is 32.5 hours.
Since CREATeV runs on a renewable energy source, research was in large funded by Environment And Climate Change Canada. The quiet electric motors and long flight duration has large application in wildlife surveying and fire detection.
Since there are many complex systems on board CREATeV has a large team with many different responsibilities. My main roles were daytime flight strategies and improving state estimations by tuning the extended Kalman filter.
In order to get the most out of potential daylight hours CREATeV would be assembled and undergo pre-flight checks hours before sunrise.
I was able to present on daytime flight strategies at a CASI conference in November 2023. This highlighted the initial results of using live wind estimations with a model predictive controller.
A ground station was used to monitor live transmitted data at a reduced rate. The aircraft used ArduPilot as an autopilot and MissionPlanner for the ground station. Aircraft control could be performed using the RC transmitter or MissionPlanner. All raw aircraft data was logged on an on-board SD card.
CREATeV is a hand launched aircraft requiring a team of five: two runners, two initial support, and one pilot.
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