File:BA FS11 Dokumentation Drohne.pdf

A drone named UMARS was developed at the ZHAW for atmospheric research flights. An autopilot based on the open source project Paparazzi was developed in former projects in order to enable the use of the drone by personal with no model-flight experience. Thus, in this project an existing air-speed control strategy was further developed using now a Prandtl probe and a differential pressure sensor. New autonomous launch and landing procedures were also implemented successfully in this project. To avoid disturbances of the Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) caused by the acceleration during the launch, an angle-of-attack sensor was mounted on the drone, which has improved clearly the flight attitude relative to the air flow. An accurate measurement of the drone's height during the landing approach is necessary. An ultrasonic sensor was specified to accomplish this task.