Autonomous RC Aircraft – Design Build Fly Capstone

Competition: AIAA Design, Build, Fly (DBF) 2024/25
Sponsor: OSGC, AIAA
Report: DBF Final Report

Problem

The AIAA DBF competition challenged our team to design and build a custom RC aircraft capable of captive-carry and autonomous flight — modeling the real-world X-1 supersonic aircraft experiments. Midway through the project, the team narrowly missed the competition cutoff. Rather than stopping, the scope was redefined: remove the glider, and make the mothership fully autonomous.

The core challenge became: validate a complete ArduPilot-based autopilot stack on a custom-built aircraft and achieve autonomous flight — a first for the OSU DBF team.

What I Did

Autonomous Systems Lead

Led the autonomous sub-team responsible for selecting, configuring, and validating the entire autopilot stack:

Configured ArduPilot firmware for the aircraft’s flight dynamics and mission profiles
Used Mission Planner for avionics setup, pre-flight checks, and live telemetry monitoring
Defined and tested autonomous waypoint missions and failsafes (low battery, lost telemetry, recovery modes)

De-risking with a Test Bed

Before integrating into the custom airframe, I validated the full autopilot configuration on a retrofitted off-the-shelf aircraft. This meant any issues with ArduPilot tuning or Mission Planner configuration were caught on a sacrificial platform — not the hand-built competition plane.

Solving a Manufacturing Problem

During wing assembly, the team discovered an unintended geometric twist at the wingtips causing a negative angle of attack — a condition that would prevent the aircraft from generating lift at takeoff. The fix: switch the landing gear configuration from tricycle to taildragger, lowering the tail to restore a positive AoA on the ground without touching the wing structure.

Hardware Fabrication

Hands-on build throughout:

Wing frame fabrication (balsa and basswood ribs, carbon fiber spar)
Full avionics wiring and soldering — flight controller, ESCs, receivers, power distribution
Airframe assembly and systems integration

Results

Achieved the team’s first successful autonomous test flight, validating the ArduPilot integration, waypoint navigation, and autonomous landing capability on the custom-built aircraft.