Flight Testing Small UAVs for Aerodynamic Parameter Estimation

A flight data acquisition system was developed to aid unmanned vehicle designers in verifying the vehicle\u27s design performance. The system is reconfigurable and allows the designer to choose the correct combination of complexity, risk, and cost for a given flight test. The designer can also reconfigure the system to meet packaging and integration requirements. System functionality, repeatbility, and accuracy was validated by collecting data during multiple flights of a radio-controlled aircraft. Future work includes sensor fusion, thrust prediction methods, stability and control derivative estimation, and growing Cal Poly\u27s small-scale component aerodynamic database