This is our final product, a flying, dome-shaped object that flies using four propellers. These propellers are powered by a very small Lithium Polymer battery. This powers a small computer that transmits signal from a remote control to four small brushless motors. We 3D printed a gray frame that holds all of these components. In this 3D frame, we included stands to hold the part of our project that is asthetically pleasing. The material we used was fiber optic cables. These have a coat of chemicals around it and transmit light through it and shine out the end. We sanded the outside so that the outside as well as the inside would light up and cause a glowing effect. 

Here are some images of our final.

Plus, here is a gif of one of our second flight tests.

We succeeded greatly in creating a real version of the Harry Potter Snitch, commonly used in the game of Quidditch. This is because we all wanted to make fiction real. It is because we have seen things in fiction come to life and we feel as if we should make our dreams come true also. So we started brainstorming ideas about how to build the Snitch and drew a rough sketch of what we originally thought it would look like.

As you can see our early sketch of the Snitch doesn't look like what you see before you. That is because we had to make some alterations in order to allow the Snitch to fly. We want the Snitch to be multifunctional such as sense a human's presence. But then we looked thoroughly around and figured out that Nuvu did not have heat sensors or cameras. Actually a part of the adversities we met during our building is that sometimes the equipment and materials are limited and doesn’t fit our expectation. So we need to design our Snitch base on what we have here in NuVu. Then we were introduced to Rhino where you can make 2D and 3D designs that you can then make real using the laser cutter or the 3D printer.

We made this primary prototype of what we thought the frame would look like by using an exacto knife on cardboard to cut out wings that would be used for decoration if it doesn’t lay negative influence on flying, also, a cardboard model of what we thought our frame would look like.

We worked on a design and made more prototypes until we created a 3D printed model that you see above you. But we weren't content to stop there so we designed another frame in Rhino that was thinner but still retained the required strength. So we printed it overnight and got it back in the morning. This was the final.

You can see a diagram above. So the propellers located inside the Snitch's 3D-printed body are turned by the two Space One Motors. The whole thing is controlled by the arduino micro board. The pendulum makes sure the Snitch automatically rights itself if it's tilting randomly. The battery you see above is not the one we'll be using but it certainly has the ability to power the Snitch.

At first the design of Snitch is just the replication of the golden one in Harry’s world, but later, we finds this little flying sphere has a variety of functions waiting for us to explore. Due to its sphere-designed frame and user-friendly control, it can be the Snitch in a group game which every one run after it. It can also be a supervision camera flying in the city sky and help  secure the safety of our neighborhood. By adding different sensors we can adjust it anytime anywhere as long as it meets our expectations. It does not have the drawbacks such as vertical taking fly that plane have and its shape will be welcomed by most of people.

Here are some images of our final.

Finally, here's a gif of one of the tests.

So here's the demo.

We were prompted to design and build an object that either flew or gave the appearence of flight. After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to make wearable wings that did not fly, but did extend and flap. After much consideration, we discarded the idea that they would extend, and instead decided to make them flap like actual bird's wings.

Our final design was a laser-cut wing made of thin wood that had leaf-like designs on it. The whole thing was made of wood, and it was not covered by a fabric of any sort. This design added aesthetic and reduced drag. It was slightly heavier, but that was not a problem as it did not need to acutally fly. 

We were prompted to design and build an object that either flew or gave the appearence of flight. After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to make wearable wings that did not fly, but did extend and flap. After much consideration, we discarded the idea that they would extend, and instead decided to make them flap like actual bird's wings.

Our first iteration was made out of sculpting wire, tyvec, and tape. We sculpted the wire into a wing shape, covered it with tyvec, and held it together with the tape. We quickly realized that sculpting wire was too flimsy, and that the tyvec would cause too much drag. So we decided to use different materials.

Our second iteration was a cardboard prototype covered in tyvec, but with slits so that air could get through and the tyvec wouldn't cause too much drag. This prototype design could work, but it had some major aesthetic flaws. Namely, the tyvec had writing on it and it did not look good. Also, the cardboard was, once again, too flimsy.

Our third iteration replaced the tyvec with pink fabric, and the cardboard with wood. The wood was a good material to make it out of, so we decided to use it for our final iteration. But the pink fabric still had drag despite the slits, and it also did not look good. The stitches looked messy, and there was no "nice" side of the wing. One side had holes for sewing, the other had extra fabric and messy edges. So we decided to completely get rid of the idea of covering the wood.

Our final design was a laser-cut wing made of thin wood that had leaf-like designs on it. The whole thing was made of wood, and it was not covered by a fabric of any sort. This design added aesthetic and reduced drag. It was slightly heavier, but that was not a problem as it did not need to acutally fly. 

Our goal was to crate a flying objeect that wasent a plane or a quadcopter. When we first got our group we didnt really have any idea of what our objest would be. At first we brainstormemed a list of things that we wanted it to be. we cam up with tow prioritys. It would be a blended wing plane that could takeoff and land veticaly. At first we thought that we would have two propellers in side of the fusalage. Then after some thinkning we decided to have the propellers on the out side of the plane. But most of it worked in the end. On Thusday after camp ended I stayed and fixed the plane because it ahd crashed earlier that day. One of the hinge servos was not working so verticol take of was out of the question. It was going to be a tose launch. It was tosed into the air diped down and then shot up and to the left trund and crashed spliting in two. I did not care that it was brockenl, it had flone and that what we had been trying to do.

Our goal was to crate a flying objeect that wasent a plane or a quadcopter. When we first got our group we didnt really have any idea of what our objest would be. At first we brainstormemed a list of things that we wanted it to be. we cam up with tow prioritys. It would be a blended wing plane that could takeoff and land veticaly. At first we thought that we would have two propellers in side of the fusalage. Then after some thinkning we decided to have the propellers on the out side of the plane. 

It took a week and a half of hard work to build and fix the aircraft. It consisted of two large wings with a laser cut tail in between the wings. The motors and propellers were mounted on pilones that stuck out of the front of the wing. On the tip of the pilones were hinges that moved the propellers from vertical take off to horizontal flight position. The hinge piece, which was 3D printed, was the most fragle part of the entier aircraft but we spant alot of the time working on it.

I think that is we had more time there would noit be much that we would change I think that we should make the wings smaller and more forward swept to move the center of gravity up and lessen weight to allow for a better chance a vertical take off.  I think that we also couild design and make a way to luanch the plane and get it going faster. we might also need to add elevaters so that the plane would be able to control pitch better. We can make the wood arm stronger to reduce the damage it made when it was vibrating, and it can keep on flying longer instead of breaking up. we might also make the hinge strronger so if it crashes it will be able to suvive. 

Our plane contains one propeller in both two  wings. There are two wood arms that we use to hold the propeller and connect the propeller and our plane. Besides, the propeller can rotate 45 degrees. In our test, the rotating part works successfully. Our plane has two elevators and one rudder to control the plane. However, the shape of our plane is not perfect. The center of gravity ls not in a proper place so that our propeller cannot make the plane take off vertically. The force which supports the head of the airplane make the plane unbalanced. In the first flight test, we trieed to make the plane take off vertically, but the plane was not able to fly. In the second flight test, we solid the wood arm to make sure it wouldn't vibrate and change our way of taking of. This time we tried to make it take of in regular way so we throw it . However, it had kept fly for about 3 second and then fall. I guess it was due to the super huge wings that our plane use and the position of the battery. The head of the plane became too heavy to fly.  

But most of it worked in the end. On Thusday after camp ended I stayed and fixed the plane because it ahd crashed earlier that day. One of the hinge servos was not working so verticol take of was out of the question. It was going to be a tose launch. It was tosed into the air diped down and then shot up and to the left trund and crashed spliting in two. I did not care that it was brockenl, it had flone and that what we had been try ing to do.

Making something innovative is always a challenge, while thinking of all of the possible project; Quadrocopters, Octocoptors, and other multi-rotors, we discovered that we wanted to have an idea that would help solve a problem. There’re many QuadCopter that we can buy with Gyro, self-balance and even GPS that supposedly would make the drone go wherever you want it go, but few people had ever done for a fixed wing. So we decided to do it, we can make it deliver literally everything that is under its capacity. Overall saying, a fixed-wing-plane is better than a conventional multi-rotors-copters in many ways. 

Deciding how our plane should look was quite easy, there are many available models that we can search up on the internet, you can see that from one of our early sketches. However unlike the usual design procedure, we first focused on the flight controls first. We choose Arduino because all of our group members are capable of programming in that language. However when we were programming on the Uno board, we encountered a problem, the Receiver doesn’t output normal dc power, it doesn’t even output usual PWM (which these kinds of controllers always do). 

It outputs a Pulse Train, though it works like a PWM signal, but there is a slight difference between them. They are all controlled by calculating the duration of the pulse, but in PWM signal, the gap between each pulse is strictly controlled, in the Pulse-Train, the pulse itself still matters but the gap doesn’t interfere with the signal as long as it is longer than 20 million seconds. In order to solve that problem, we downloaded a new library which allow the Arduino Uno board to understand the signal, it took us about half a week to complete all of the manual control programme. 

Then we started working on the plane, we used a one metre Carbon-Fiber rod for our ‘Frame’. Our first concern was how to connect the motor firmly onto the Carbon-Fiber Rod, we thought about simply screwing the motor onto the rod, but despite Carbon-Fiber’s strength, it is extremely easy to crack under horizontal force. To solve that, we created a 3D model in SolidWorks to connect the motor to the rod. When it finished printing, we installed the motor to the connector and push the motor on the rod, though it looked very tough and unmovable from the first look, when we attempted to try the motor with the prop, the motor and the connector both flew off the rod. Luckily no one was hurt, but we were all scared plenty. Finally we drilled a hole on the connector and drilled a hole onto the rod using the table drill learning our mistake from previous attempts with a hand-drill. We secured the motor and moved on to the next component. 

The wings came next, first we thought designing the wings would be a easy task: ‘What’s so hard to draw two rectangles?’, but as it turns out that we spent one day to design the wing in FLXR5 in order to have the most efficient design. Then we need the hot wire cutter to cut the wing out —— believe me, it’s harder than you would think. Because the foam boards are either used, bent, or too narrow. When we finally cut the wings out, we discovered that it was in the wrong scale. It took us about half a day to cut the wings out. Then comes the million-dollar-question: how are we suppose to connect two 20cm-wide, 75cm-long wings onto a one centimeter square, perfectly smooth rod?! The first thing we thought about was a connector, so we made one, but the ‘connector’s’ sole usage was to widen the rod’s width from one centimetre to six centimetres, so the question remains —— how are we going to connect the wings to the ‘connector’? We sure can’t screw it on. Then we thought about glue, normal super-glue sure won’t do, we need some kind of glue that would be act like a gel, so we put hot-glue on the connector first, then put the wings on it to prevent it from moving momentarily, then we mixed e-poxy and put it into the gap between the gap between the connector and wings so the wings would never fall off or move, we left it over night to dry. We did he same thing to the rudder and the tail. Then comes installing the control surfaces, the servos that should move the ailerons, rudder, elevator. This part was surprisingly easy, it only took us half a day finish all of the control surfaces. until they fell off

    On the second week, we started building the auto-nav system, we were able to get a Arduino Mega with the GPS, gyro and a XBee which is a ling-range transmitter. We had some problem Serial printing the numbers and the GPS was unable to connect to satellites indoor. However we gradually overcame them, but the problem was that the auto-control wasn’t stable enough for the plane to fly in the air, so we thought about PID algorithm. PID —— Proportion, integration and differential. It was the easiest to stabilize a programmable moving object, it prevent the plane from making a very sudden movement but yet has enough flexibility to maneuver the plane to do sudden rises and descents. Then a problem ran into our faces: the Uno board didn’t have enough ports and we’ll have to switch to Mega Board, but the PulseIn library only worked for the Uno board and will crash the Mega, so we asked the library provider to rewrite the library for us that we could use it for the Mega 2560 board. We spent about half a day hooking up the Mega board to the control surfaces and cleaning up the wires using zip-ties. However when we test flighted it, the elevator got blew off, the wings weren’t damaged but the gears broke so we had to laser-cut it again. We had a little time to adjust our KP value and get the PID algorithm to work.

    In general our project went very well, our fixed-wing can fly over 40 miles per hour, reaching a range of more than 40 miles and carrying a cargo of at least half a kilogram. We can use it to drop medicine, inflatable life preserver, water purifier and even more. It can switch between manual control and autonomous flight. Our plane should be able to fly fully without human interfere though we had never have a chance to test it.