Week 7 was mainly focused on finalizing the Preliminary Design Report. After taking in our liaison’s feedback from the presentation, and the IPPD Director’s feedback on the first draft of the written report, the team reviewed the draft and finalized the document. Most work involved correcting formatting, and expanding on the concept design section, introducing our methods for design comparison and which design was most promising.

Additionally, the concept generation process has been taking place and close to be finalized. As a team, we have been creating trade matrices for both the alula mechanism and the Parakeet. At the moment, we are leaning into a design that is easy to construct and lightweight, to reduce its impact on aerodynamic performance. Likewise, the parakeet trade matrices are a work in progress, and at the moment we are finalizing the component selection, which are going to be compared mainly on weight and computational performance. The following weeks will involve a heavy amount of concept design, as our prototyping inspection day is arriving, and the team wants to have a solidified concept by the PID date. Below it is possible to see the type of aircraft the product will be implemented on.

Week 6 was mainly dedicated polishing and presenting our Preliminary Design Review to our liaison. Overall, our liaison was impressed with our presentation giving us a lot of positive feedback. He was especially happy with the current concepts that we pitched to him and is expecting us to fully develop them in the coming weeks. One of the main pieces of feedback we received was to start figuring out how mechanisms that are going to be housed within the aircraft will be accessed in case of component changes and maintenance.

As mentioned the next steps for our project is to decided on a concept that we think is going to work best and start maturing it for the next major deadline which is Prototype Inspection Day. As a team we will decided on the best concept using trade matrices that evaluate features such as weight, number of components, spanwise movement, etc. The same will be done for components that will be used for our flight controller. These components will be evaluated based off of weight, price, end of life manufacturing date, etc. The end of life manufacturing date is especially important as our liaison want to ensure that all components will be able to be purchased again in case they fail after we are done with the project.

Week 4 has consisted of significant progress for Volout Avis, with the selection of our airframe and initial concept generation for our bio-inspired aircraft

A number of aircraft were proposed for use in the project, and after careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of multiple frames, two aircraft were selected as our primary and backup airframes to be used for prototyping. Many factors led us towards these decisions, and our selections were agreed upon by our liasion and coach.

Concept generation for our bio-inspired design has also begun, with multiple CAD models of experimental mechanisms already completed and more being worked on to present to our liaison to determine a suitable solution to address the unique nature of our project.

Further work on PCB component selection has also been performed, with the number possible components being reduced due to additional requirement definition and previous module configurations being used to verify selections based on previous success of certain configurations, with new components being weighed against a multitude of specs to produce an optimal product.

Our team, Volout Avis, has officially begun work in the IPPD program. We are developing a bio inspired aircraft sponsored by Professor Kamran Mohseni’s Research Group. The phrase Volo ut Avis is Latin for “Fly like a Bird,” which reflects both our project goal and the design philosophy guiding our work this semester.

Team Identity and Roles

We have established our team identity, selected our logo, and assigned initial roles. To ensure everyone gains experience across responsibilities, we will rotate blog duties every week and rotate team roles every couple of weeks. Our current assignments are:

• Alec: Finance and Travel Coordinator
• Michael: Scribe and Technical Team Leader
• Francisco: Facilitator and Timekeeper
• Tomas: Team Presenter and Blog/Wiki Manager
• Darren: Template Manager
• Justin: Poster Coordinator and Research Librarian

These roles give us a strong organizational foundation as we move into deeper technical development.

Lab Access and Coordination

Our primary lab tour and access have been completed. We are coordinating additional workspace and secondary lab access directly through Professor Mohseni’s Research Group. This ensures we have the facilities needed for prototyping, testing, and iterative development throughout the semester.

Technical Progress and Early Research

Preliminary PCB component selection has begun. We have identified the first set of parts needed for our control and sensing systems. In addition, the first four test platforms have been selected, giving us a clear starting point for early experimentation and subsystem validation.

Communication and Planning

We have scheduled our coach and liaison meetings for the semester. These checkpoints will help us stay aligned with project expectations and ensure timely feedback as we progress.

This marks the beginning of our journey toward designing and building a bio inspired aircraft. We look forward to seeing our ideas evolve into prototypes and eventually into a fully realized system that embodies the spirit of Volout Avis.