This is the Razor 3, a 3D-printed
fully autonomous UAV.
It's built from completely
off the shelf hardware,
so the brains of the unit is
a cell phone, two batteries,
an electric ducted fan.
Our first launch
was a car launch.
We lifted off out of
the sunroof of my car
at about 25 miles an hour.
The second launch we
moved to a bungee cord
and launched it off the ground.
And we've just
gotten to the point
where we're hand-launching.
It was designed to
be hand-launchable.
That's been one of the major
constraints all the way
from the very beginning.
It's going to take a leap of
faith when we finally do it.
Three, two, one.
Three, two, one.
It's taking a beating, though.
I teach a few courses here at
the University on jet engine
design and manufacturing, where
we actually design and build
a jet engine and 3D print it.
The first year I did
this, one of my students
took a video with his
cell phone and that night,
put it on YouTube.
Some folks at Mitre
happened to see that video.
They were looking
around for someone
that could help them to
design and build a fully
autonomous 3D-printed airplane.
And we started out with a
somewhat conventional airplane,
just to prove that you can 3D
print something that would fly.
And we've moved on
to our Razor here.
It's a flying wing
configuration.
And it flies up to and
over 100 miles an hour,
but it really finds it's sweet
spot around 40 miles an hour.
Because of the autonomous
nature of the plane,
we needed to be able to
do on-board calculations.
And Mitre has been working
with this technology package
where you have a cell
phone, an Android cell
phone that's actually the brains
of your electronic operations.
What this allows us to
do is to kind of hijack
the processor and the
memory of the phone.
We use the camera and you
use 3g LTE connectivity
in the cellular network.
This aircraft is really
designed around 3D printing,
but what it's trying
to showcase is
what's generally referred
to as rapid prototyping.
We have full control
of the design.
We design it on
a CAD program, we
can change and modify the
models any way that we choose.
And we can do it very quickly.
We decided that it would be
pretty much impossible to hand
launch with our original
motor, just because it wasn't
putting out enough thrust.
What it came down to
was a lot of iterations
of printing to try to get the
tolerances and clearances just
right.
The problems you solve on
real-world problems like this
are not like textbook
problems, where
the answer's in the
back of the book,
and you just have to
try to get that answer.
A lot of times, you don't
really know what the problem is.
The solution is very nebulous.
You have to figure
that out yourself.
So every one of those
solutions is your own,
and you feel pretty
proud about it.
You get a thrill out of it when
you see it actually flying,
and realize that all those
little steps, every decision
you made along the
way really ended up
being the right choice.
Go ahead and fly it if you want.
