UNSW Computational Mechanics and Robotics

MAVSTAR team are the proud recipients of "the best UGV performance" award, which was one of the four awards in the competition in MAV08. MAV08, primarily organised by the US Army, was aimed at demonstrating the performance of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) and their cooperative performance with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) through competition. MAVSTAR was one of 12 teams shortlisted for participation and the only team invited from Australia. More

Phil Sammons has successfully flown Ladybird UAV on its maiden flight. The UAV flew well under human control with no signs of instability. Next step is to fly the UAV again with GPS tracking and follow the path in Flightgear.
Other Images 1 2

The MAVSTAR project has some new members. A number of undergrad students have been volunteering their time to help out. They are learning how to prioritise tasks and work in a team environment. The prototype 2 took another test flight today. Stable and fully manual hover was achieved (see video). The next step is to turn on the ultrasonic sensor to allow semi-autonomous hover.

Micro Aerial Vehicle for Search, Tracking And Reconnaissance - Our brushless, coaxial MAV took it's first flight. Some instabilities in the yaw control made the helicopter difficult to fly, but it is showing great potential in payload capacity. More

Recently The Catalyst team from ABC TV came to visit our lab here at UNSW. They wanted to do a story on "The Future of Aerospace" so they did an interview with John Page (one of out Lecturers here In the Aerospace Department). They were also interested in some of the work we are doing here in out Robotics Lab. So they included some of the Work that Phil Sammons is doing on Autonomous Aircraft Simulation and Lin-Chi Mak is doing on indoor localisation of Micro aerial vehicles.

Computational Mechanics:
The custom Finite Element Analysis (FEA) code written by Michael Man and Dave Kellermann has generated results showing it can use the new composite strain tensor and is rotationally independent.

New Masters of Engineering Candidate Daud Warraich:
Preventative Maintenance
Daud is developing a new method of crack inspection and failure detection for structures like bridges and aircraft wings. This work proposes an intelligent method of preventative maintenance that will be faster and more reliable, hence be cheaper and easier.

Sometimes we have to put our engineering skills that we are taught in first year to good use.
    
i.e. HAMMER + BOTTLE = BEER!

Undergraduate Robot Design
Undergraduate students learn how to design and build intelligent robots that can sense their environment through use of AVR Microcontrollers and simple sensors. This year we saw a reverse parking robot that used an ultrasonic sensor to scan the parking space and guide the car into position. We had another group use ultrasonic sensors to follow a leading robot whilst keeping a safe distance. Another group, used ceiling mounted cameras to guide a robot around the room while Infra-Red and Ultrasonic sensors kept a look out for obstacles that may venture into its path. This particular robot was designed to work in a busy office, delivering internal post and delivering coffee.