Avionics at University

During my undergraduate studies at university we were involved in an avionics project for our final year thesis. This project called for the development of an autonomous UAV for the study of communications characteristics between nodes of a large land (and now air) based wireless mesh network.



This project also involved the development of surveillance hardware and software that would map out a live mosaic of streaming video data into Google Earth which was then stiched together to create a new overlay.



The project hence provided a practical application of a "cow finder" mission, which would enable the UAV to search for lost cows (which would have a mesh network node and a GPS receiver attached) that had gone outside of range.

During development we even got to successfully demonstrate our UAV in the 2008 UAV Outback Challenge. A monumental feat, considering all of the other teams managed to destroy their craft during the competition.