During my junior year on Cornell Rocketry, I was the Recovery and Payload Lead. I lead the subteam as we designed an autonomous parafoil payload. Our goal was for the payload to deploy from the rocket and then autonomously navigate to a predetermined GPS coordinate using a guided parafoil. My teammates and I engineered a full scale guided parafoil system for the rocket the previous year. However, our design had flaws, so we needed to take on a smaller scale challenge to get a better understanding of autonomous parafoils. The payload and its housing included mechanical, electrical, and software systems; I worked with subteam members as they designed each. Mechanical systems included the payload itself and the deployment system. The payload had line pulling mechanisms so that it could steer the parafoil. The housing deployed the payload by melting 3D printed columns to which a door was fastened. After burn wires melted the columns, the door opened and the payload deployed. Springs and a ramp pushed the payload out. The electrical systems on the payload included sensors, batteries, and an Arduino. Flight code that steered the payload ran on the Arduino. After design, I manufactured and assembled the electrical and mechanical systems. After assembly, we conducted a series performance tests. At the end of the year, we were only beginning to test our flight code, and our payload did not deploy during launch at competition due to an abnormal descent. Now that I'm a senior, the team and I will continue to develop autonomous parafoil systems and learn from past years.
This is the Guided Parafoil Payload CAD. Key features are labeled.
Here, we tested our payload deployment system. The payload door was fastened to 3D printed columns. Nichrome wire was wrapped around the columns; when current passed through the wires, they heated up and melted the columns, which released the door and deployed the payload. As seen in the video, the payload and is parafoil deployed cleanly.
In this video, we are are flight testing our payload. We lifted the payload and its parafoil with a drone and a rig that we designed. To drop the payload, we opened the drone's landing legs. We only began conducting tests like this at the very end of the year, so the team still has much more progress to make on our guided parafoil systems.
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