Optikos - Test Flight 2

NC State University Aerospace Senior Design 2008-2009

This video is from the 2nd successful flight of Optikos, an unmanned surveillance aircraft. As a tailless vehicle flying at low Reynolds numbers, it posed several unique challenges for the team. Students (in teams of 7-8) worked the fall semester to design and do computational analysis to predict performance, and have spent the spring semester building and testing critical components en route to a series of flight tests to determine stability, control, performance, and safety characteristics. The end goal is to obtain certification from the instructor that the aircraft is flyable in a public setting, building to an end flight at the Senior Design Picnic.

The Optikos aircraft is being flight tested to determine real-life flight parameters and to obtain clearance for public flight.

The launcher is a custom design which accelerates the aircraft to 39 fps in less than 6 feet.

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Category:

Science & Technology

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• optikos
• ncsu
• aerospace
• flight
• test
• engineering
• senior
• design
• launcher
• nc
• state
• ae