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AE441 Aerospace Systems Design

This is the capstone design course in the undergraduate Aerospace Engineering curriculum. The following information is for the Spring 1998 course offering.
Additional details on this course, design proposals and video records of the flight tests are available by contacting Stephen M. Batill. This page was last updated April 24, 1998.

Spring 1998 - Project Description and Major Milestones:

The following describes the project for this team-based, design-build course. As you review this mission you will see that the students are attempting to design an aircraft system which will effectively duplicate the first flight of the Wright Brothers but without Orville at the controls. They are replacing Orville with a computer. Developing the aircraft concept, sensors, computer control and fabricating the entire system in a single semester course is quite an undertaking!

Request for Proposals
The flight demonstration for this year's designs were conducted at the Loftus Center on Thursday, April 23th at 7 pm.

Design Teams:

The following student design/build teams have completed this project. They are pictured below with their aircraft on the evening of the demonstration flights Links to the group's www sites will remain active for a limited time.

The Gold Team

The Blue Team

The Critical Design Review took place on Tuesday, April 7, 1998. The review team consisted of the following industry representatives.

David L. Olson, AlliedSignal Inc., South Bend, IN
Tim Meckstroth, AlliedSignal Inc., South Bend, IN
Robert Greenwell, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group,Seattle, WA
Jan Mooney, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Seattle, WA
Walt Howard, Boeing Commercial Airplane Group, Seattle, WA
Kevin Aleshire, The Boeing Company, St. Louis, MO
John Krekeler, The Boeing Company, St. Louis, MO
Paul Bevilaqua, Lockheed Advanced Development Co., Palmdale, CA
Pamela A. Williamson, Chrysler Corp., Auburn Hills, MI

The generous contribution of time and valuable comments made by each of the reviewers is greatly appreciated by the entire class.

The following are some "highlights" of the day's presentations.

Nine days to flight demonstration and the vehicles begin to take shape.

The Wright Stuff at work.

The "other" group.

Three days to flight demonstration and the airframes are almost done. The avionics packages are key elements in these autonomous aircraft.

The Aerohaus concept.

"Wilberless" is born.

Initial taxi tests. Flying in two days.

The Aerohaus concept.

"Wilberless"

Flight demonstration tests.

The Aerohaus concept.

This aircraft was able to perform the taxi mission succefully. It was flown successfully under remote pilot control and it was able to taxi, takeoff and land under semi-autonomous control with a remote pilot controlling only the heading.

"Wilberless"

This aircraft successfully performed the taxi. It performed well when flown by a remote pilot and it is the first aircraft designed by UND AME students to taxi, takeoff and land successfully under completely autonomous, onboard computer control.