Most undergraduate aeronautical/aerospace engineering programs do not contain a significant amount of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) analysis and design education experience. Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) has incorporated UAV education into its aeronautical engineering program in terms of a concentration. Three courses have been developed, designed and offered. In the past few years, several valuable lessons have been learned and a few changes/adjustments have been made. The UAV along with a ground control station and the launch and recovery systems makes up an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). These two subsystems are also covered along with UAV in all three courses. Furthermore, this paper presents SNHU lessons learned and experiences in this area and makes recommendations to other universities that might be interested in establishing UAV education in their undergraduate aeronautical/aerospace engineering programs. The lab configuration, workspace, camera optical system, communications system, control software package, and features of quadcopters are presented. Moreover, highlights of the effectiveness of this experiential learning are presented.
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4387-8177
Southern New Hampshire University
[biography]
Dr. Mohammad H. Sadraey is an Associate Professor in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Aeronautics at the Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, New Hampshire, and the national vice president of Sigma Gamma Tau honor society in USA. Dr. Sadraey’s main research interests are in aircraft design techniques, aircraft performance, flight dynamics, autopilot, and design and automatic control of unmanned air vehicles. He received his MSc. in Aerospace Engineering in 1995 from RMIT, Melbourne, Australia, and his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Kansas, Kansas, USA in 2006. Dr. Sadraey is a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a member of American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and is in Who’s Who in America for many years. He has over 24 years of professional experience in academia and industry. Dr. Sadraey is the author of six other books including “Aircraft Design: A Systems Engineering Approach”, “Design of Unmanned Aerial Systems”, published by Wiley Publications in 2012, and 2019, and Aircraft Performance Analysis by CRC in 2016.
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