Sensor Placement Air Force Research Lab Design Competition

Project Abstract

Special Operations Force (SOF) requires an automated insertion suite for situational awareness sensors. A two-semester effort has been taken inside a Capstone project to plan, prototype, and design a method to achieve the needs of a particular stakeholder group. This group of stakeholders includes military personnel, police, and field service personnel for covert unmanned placement of sensors at elevated locations. Research, a detailed design process, prototyping and analysis has been conducted to optimize a multitude of subsystems within our insertion suite. The subsystems include delivery/deployment of sensors, adhesive sticking of sensors following deployment, drone system vertical ascension for variable height during deployment of sensors, rover support for docking with drone systems, and communications / signal processing across systems. Through techniques of design innovation, our prototypes were downselected to reflect a full system composed of these subsystems, in order to achieve the placement of a sensor package at a desired location. This text sets out to describe our research, selection and design processes throughout the course of our work.

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