Design and Development of Unmanned Air Systems

Quaternion Engineering Inc. (QEI) is developing a series of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) optimized to address the growing demand for low cost, turnkey commercial and military solutions. Recent market research has shown an emerging commercial market for UAVs in applications such as small scale surveillance, remote sensing and inspection. As this market emerges there will be a large demand for affordable application specific unmanned systems that are easy and inexpensive to operate. Currently, Canada has relatively modest capabilities in terms of UAS and UAV development. However, there appears to be significant opportunities for Western Canada to progressively establish a strong niche position in the UAV industry in specific areas that could even include original UAV designs that are conceived from the ground up, to respond specifically to emerging regulatory requirements and to current and future sensor characteristics. At the end of the project QEI will have commercially available and operationally tested unmanned systems with a high technology readiness level and several products are envisaged such as novel flight platforms, payload integration and stabilization systems and low-cost auto-pilot systems.

Faculty Supervisor:

Drs. Curran Crawford & Yang Shi

Student:

Multiple

Partner:

Quaternion Engineering

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Aerospace and defense

University:

University of Victoria