cobaltdan 0 #1 August 4, 2006 Atair aerospace has developed a series of powered parafoil UAV's under contract to DARPA. The vehicles have been named LEAPP (Long Endurance Autonomous Powered Parafoils). The smallest , dubbed the Micro LEAPP, is 75 pounds auw. The largest LEAPP is 3000 pounds auw. All can be air drop deployed or ground launched. Flight endurance ranges from 4 hours to over 48 hours. if of interest, you can view recently updated information and videos on our web site. http://www.atairaerospace.com/microleapp/ and http://www.atairaerospace.com/uav/ note the 3000 pound LEAPP page is still being updated with current pics, check back soon... Edited by slotperfect to make the links clicky .Daniel Preston <><> atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #2 August 4, 2006 Wow! I was thinking about designing a similar UAV for my senior project.... Those look pretty sweet. Are the control systems for navigation easier to design then the "standard" type of UAV? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cobaltdan 0 #3 August 5, 2006 you would think it is easier, but in fact it is harder than designing a rigid wing system. the reason being is that your inertial sensors are located on the vehicle not the parafoil. the two are not rigidly linked. the vehicle exhibits a yaw oscillation as wel as complicated spring vibrations from the lines, etc... so the data the inu gives you is extremely noisy and the heading it gives you at a particular instant is not necessarily the direction of actual flight. it is a non trivial task to make use of the inu data in a powered parafoil vehicle and a subject of an AIAA paper being presented in a couple weeks... keep us posted on what you develop... .Daniel Preston <><> atairaerodynamics.com (sport) atairaerospace.com (military) Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riggerrob 558 #4 August 5, 2006 A couple of weeks ago, I visited MMIST and saw some of the large, powered parachutes that they build. MMIST politely declined to show me their software. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest #5 August 6, 2006 Yea, that does make sense with the inertial sensors... I have about 2 years before I start my senior project, but my advisor keeps telling us to keep looking at what we would like to do. UAV's have always interested me and now with my new obsession of skydiving...well, yea, parachute-based UAV's seemed kinda cool. Heck, if I get a good idea, who cares about a senior project? Lol. I'll just build something... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
riggerrob 558 #6 August 6, 2006 If your senior project is based upon a UAV, it is far more likely to reach production. Air Forces seem to have lost interest in developing manned combat vehicles. Most military development money seems to be aimed at training robots (UAVs) to fight the next war. All the innovations these days seem to be with UAVs of Light sport Aircraft. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
highspeeddirt 0 #7 August 7, 2006 Para Flite built something similar around 1976.and SSE/Para Plane around 1991. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
