Senior and alumnus build unmanned aerial system

The Defense Department envisions a day when unmanned drones—the kind being used in Afghanistan and Iraq—will be even more advanced and capable of real-time video.

To this end, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created a contest to reward makers of these more advanced drones, and senior Michael Zuccarino and 2011 alumnus Angel Hernandez have helped enter a prototype.

UAVForge is a competition to design and build a backpack portable UAS (unmanned aerial system) that flies in and out of critical environments to conduct sustained surveillance without detection. DARPA and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic (SSC Atlantic) co-sponsored this initiative to encourage collaboration in UAS design and manufacturing. DARPA sent out a challenge looking for companies and groups with experienced, innovative approaches to UAS technology.

Zuccarino and Hernandez became involved in the competition through their ongoing internship at Acuity Technologies, Inc. When the company entered the challenge in October 2011 as one group out of 125 competitors, Zuccarino and Hernandez became part of the team. They worked with company president Robert Clark and Clark’s coworker Douglas Palmer to create a computer animation of their design concept and submit a proof of flight video.

“The most challenging part for me was converting a 3-D text array for coordinates of an ideal wing curvature into a wing spline in SolidWorks to design the wings,” Zuccarino said. “[Hernandez] and I went to battle with our laptops for a week for that.”

Hernandez agrees that difficulties with the 3-D technology made the project challenging.

“I believe patience is our most important skill because 3-D [computer-aided design] work always becomes chaotic when the CAD software is having a bad day,” Hernandez said.

Patience and hard work made it possible for Zuccarino and Hernandez to stream live video of their UAS to DARPA.

“It was a nerve-wracking experience because the UAS,” Zuccarino said, ”requires an extremely precise feedback system to keep the plane in stable flight.”

Acuity Technologies will most likely advance the next stage, which is a fly-off in early April, following which the winning UAS will be chosen. The winning team will work with manufacturers to make a limited number of air vehicles based on their design and receive $10,000 and the chance to demonstrate their vehicle in an actual operational exercise in mid May.

Regardless of the competition’s outcome, Zuccarino considers the project to be a valuable learning experience.

“I feel extraordinarily grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in this project from its inception,” Zuccarino said. “I feel I learned how to work with a boss and design components using SolidWorks the most.”

Hernandez enjoys the opportunity to collaborate with Zuccarino because he finds him “brilliant and [it’s] great to work with.” For Hernandez the most rewarding part of the project is knowing that he and Zuccarino are working on a solution that even the Department of Defense is having trouble finding.

“It makes me feel like the day the president calls me on my cell [phone] to ask for a solution is getting closer,” Hernandez said.