Penn Aerial Robotics launches first successful flight test with biggest plane in club's history

Penn Aerial Robotics conducted its first successful flight test with its current model airplane on Oct. 12. 

Around 20 students showed up to the flight test at 5 a.m. at the Cross Keys Airport in New Jersey. The plane, with an airborne mass over 40 pounds, reached 120 feet of height and 55 miles per hour of speed and was able to land successfully.

The club’s flight test was part of its preparation for the SAE Aero Design Competition, which challenges competitors to build a plane that can carry the largest payload possible with a maximum wingspan of 15 feet. 

According to Engineering senior and PennAiR President Xiangyu Chen, this flight test is particularly impressive because this was the largest plane ever built in the club’s history. 

“When our plane was actually taking off, [I was] seeing everyone like ‘Oh my God, this is so cool.’ I was also really proud of the team for what we were all able to come up with,” Engineering senior and PennAiR Vice President of Operations Sakshi Lende said. “It was super exciting to see that this stuff we all worked on did the thing it was supposed to do.” 

The current model was built last year, and PennAiR used it for the first flight at the design competition. The model was able to lift off the ground but did not achieve sustained flight. This year, the team members have worked on revising the design to achieve a long enough flight time. 

Chen, who plays a major role in part procurement and project management, said he has watched the development of the plane since joining as a first year. He served as a mechanical lead during sophomore year and has remained involved in PennAiR during all four of his undergraduate years.

“There was definitely some disappointment last year that we weren't able to get it to fly the entire trajectory that we wanted,” Che said. “There was also encouragement because since COVID, there's kind of been a restart to the club.”

The club advisor Siddharth Deliwala, who is the director of Electrical and Systems Engineering labs, said that the performance at the competition gave the team a chance to improve on top of their work.

Between last year’s competition and this year’s successful flight test, the team made several corrections to its model. The changes included adding a spring to part of the landing mechanism to blunt the force from hitting the ground and redesigning the tail to decrease the weight.

Engineering junior Avaniko Asokkumar, vice president of finance and member of the software and mechanical teams, said that the team had a large workload during the few weeks leading up to the competition and were glad that they managed to assemble everything in time.

“I was pretty proud of how far we came,” Asokkumar said. “I was really proud seeing the plane actually fly.”

Che was also proud of the successful flight test, given last year’s disappointment when the plane did not achieve sustained flight.

“You can see these things on the computer with data and these simulations all the time. This is the first time it worked in the physical world,” Che said. “There's definitely a moment of surprise. Everyone was super excited as we kind of passed through all the different metrics and tests that we planned out.”

Che said that this flight test not only established a routine for the club to pass flights through checklists, but also built relationships within the club. He added that this flight test will be a step in moving the club towards more successful flight tests, the next of which is planned to be in the first week of December.

“We're super excited to build on that and do even better this year,” Che said.

Deliwala noted that a strength of Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science is the opportunity for students to build their own projects within clubs. He stated “that kind of innovation is irreplaceable” and keeps students motivated while building team spirit.

“This is what makes engineering exciting,” Deliwala said. “We are lucky to have a student body that wants to do this in spite of the crazy homework load. That's what excites me so I'm very pleased.”

Going forward, the club plans to continue to iterate on its current model. The team aims to implement a new design that is estimated to reduce weight by 40% and use a new airfoil with more left for increased payload. The club also plans to expand into creating an autonomous aircraft with carbon fiber to compete in another subdivision of the competition this year.

“We're definitely making a lot more progress than we've made in previous years,” Lende said. “I'm super excited to see how the carbon fiber plane works out.”

Engineering sophomore and Research Development Head Endi Guo also shared confidence in the new projects.

"We have a lot of smart people working on it,” Guo said. “Autonomous flight is a challenging problem, but there are a lot of resources out there that we've been kind of drawing on.”