Autonomous Soaring

Autonomous Soaring

In the pioneering spirit of the Wright Brothers taking flight in North Carolina, I am teaching a computer it can use thermals like hawks and buzzards. As a PhD student at North Carolina State University in the Aerospace Engineering program, I aim to demonstrate an intelligent embedded system that finds and uses thermals to increase time aloft.

The project goal is 141.7mi cross country without human intervention. This will beat the 1988 FAI world record for cross country flying by 1 mile. A milestone is to beat the 25.3mi goal-and-return FAI world record set in 2005.

So far, a 30.2mi goal-and-return (60.4mi round trip) flight has been achieved, beating the current world record by almost 5 miles. The unofficial record breaking flight is documented and posted here. The flight is unofficial because the FAI model aircraft category does not allow autonomous systems and newly created UAV class does not currently have a glider category.

Come with me, as we make glider history and create an enabling technology: autonomous soaring!

Contact me: Dan Edwards

ALOFT Unofficially beats FAI
Goal-and-Return World Record!!
ALOFT flies a declared goal-and-return flight of 30.2mi (60.4mi round-trip)
in 3hr 42min, unofficially beating the old world-record of 24.3mi.
Read more about the record flight on October 5th, 2008.
Read more about other major milestones along the way.

ALOFT flight time counter: 63.5hr as of 25th May, 2009

Current News

Flying on a yucky wet nasty day was still a success
Posted by: Dan Edwards - 10/19/09 @ 1:17PM

I have never flown on a day where I landed with a dripping airplane. This was a first. It’s not like it was raining as we were flying, but misty drizzle might adequately describe it; I had to wipe the mist off of Brady’s glasses. Martin guessed cloud deck at 1000ft and it was lower than that at times. Tom and Martin took turns off the winch set up the short way across the field. The wind was from almost due North and quite cutting. Both guys commented they had some miserable flights, but it looked like they had fun! Brady and Martin flew hand-launch a bit between drizzles.

Brady flew the powered SBXC while my school colleague, Joe, flew the...

Wrapping up the research!
Posted by: Dan Edwards - 07/23/09 @ 8:47PM

Thanks to Slashdot, my meager site has seen enormous traffic volume in the two days after the article released. Thanks to Mr Site Admin for keeping up with the demand!

It is sad that I have to say that the school research has come to a conclusion and is transitioning to a writing phase (it had to happen sometime). I didn't make my end 142mi goal, but I showed that with just a little know-how and some late nights coding, an airplane really can have a bird-brain and make 70 miles all by itself. In the three years of the project, ALOFT...

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