Avis Drone Labs

Avis is the University of Sheffield’s student-led UAV project consisting of over 90 engineers from multiple disciplines. 

The project has 7 projects running this year:

SUAS

SUAS 2025 is a drone competition hosted in America where we have to design and build a fixed-wing aircraft which can fly for more than 30 minutes, recognise objects automatically through a camera and deploy 5 payloads; all whilst being fully autonomous. The project will have many technical challenges ranging from creating a lightweight fuselage to developing a robust object detection camera system.

IMechE UAS Challenge

The IMechE UAS Challenge is an international competition with teams from around the world designing and manufacturing an aircraft under 10kg to fly autonomously around a set of GPS coordinates and deploy a medical aid package accurately. The University of Sheffield successfully competed last year and we have high hopes of learning from our experiences and achieving an even higher ranking.

Vulcan

Vulcan is a large 3.2m wingspan 20kg quadplane which is nearing its third iteration this year. This version has a carbon fibre monocoque fuselage, wing, and tail, that drastically reduces the weight of the aircraft. The quadplane is designed to house complex avionics and comprehensive software to perform search and rescue operations.

FGCS - https://fgcs.projectfalcon.uk/

FGCS is a modern ground control station for ArduPilot aircraft that tracks real-time statistics, plots incoming telemetry, configures the autopilot, displays and analyses flight logs, and much more. The software is built in Python and javascript_ and is completely free and open source to the public on GitHub. One goal for this year is to create a physical ground control station in a protected briefcase that we can safely transport to multiple flight tests.

FPV Racing Drone

The FPV Racing Drone project is aimed at beginners and will teach members how to build, test and fly small FPV drones. Members will be split up into smaller teams of 3-5 people and will race the other teams around a course later on in the year with the small drones they built.

Lightning

Project Lightning aims to design a highly manoeuvrable tailsitter UAV, aiming to travel at high speeds and pull high Gs when cornering. The aircraft will have a wingspan of 0.8m and will be manufactured from a mix of composite materials and lightweight foam which will help minimise weight.

Avinex

Project Avinex is beginner-friendly project that simulates a business-client workflow. The “client” has come to Avinex, the “business”, with a request to build an octocopter with specific requirements. Avinex will then design, build and showcase its final design at a flight demonstration where the UAV will fly autonomously. New members will be heavily involved in the whole design and manufacturing process, allowing for a more hands-on experience.

Last year

Last year one of our projects, Project Falcon, competed in the IMechE UAS Challenge. The team conducted 7 different test flights throughout a 3 month period whilst gathering crucial data on both flight characteristics and structural soundness to further improve our design.

How we would use PCBWay's support:

With many drone projects, each drone has different requirements for PCBs due to the nature of their requirements. With PCBWays support, custom PCBs can be created allowing each drone to align to their compeitions/internal requrirements. This would expedite prototyping times and allow for more exhaustive testing, refining our designs and ensuring success at the competitions.

Links to our social media:

LinkedIn - (https://uk.linkedin.com/company/avis-drone-labs

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/avisdronelabs/