The flight data acquisition system Xollai was tasked to develop integrated many sensors to completely characterize a UAV in flight. These sensors measured the aircraft orientation and position, GPS location, airspeed and altitude, sideslip and angle-of-attack, engine RPM, magnetometer data, and aircraft servo positions. Xollai developed a completely self-contained embedded system on a custom printed circuit board. Xollai also created the enclosure with keyed and color-coded connectors, ensuring that connections can never be made improperly. The software that Xollai developed is able to integrate and log, in real-time, various sensors and data (via serial communications, analog conversions, and microsecond-resolution pulse-width-measurements). In addition, the user is able to communicate to the flight data acquisition module via a standard Bluetooth connection.
- Lockheed Martin, MS2 (Eagan, MN)
- January, 2009 - June, 2009
- Develop a flight data acquisition system for UAVs
- Integrate sensors of various types
- Log data in real time
- Wireless communication
- System will operate for two hours on a battery
- Xollai developed, completely in-house, a printed circuit board complete with a microcontroller and various other chips to achieve the integration of various sensor data.
- Xollai also created the enclosure to house the printed circuit board.
- All the necessary sensor data from serial devices, analog signals, pulse-width signals, etc. were integrated in real-time at 50 Hz.
- Over 50 hours of data can be logged onto a removable flash storage device.
- The user can communicate with the system wirelessly.
- The system can operate for longer than the two hour minimum.
- Lockheed Martin, MS2 (Eagan, MN), was satisfied with the developed flight data acquisition system.