University of Minnesota Gets NASA Grant to Study Air France Flight 447 Stall

A group of 15 University of Minnesota students is trying to harness UAS technology for flight research and civilian use.

The students recently won a grant from NASA to use their unmanned aircraft to re-create the movements of larger commercial airplanes such as the Air France flight 447 that crashed in 2009.

Because no one really knows what happened to flight 447 – the U of M team will use their drones to electronically track the twists and turns — and try to get to the bottom of the mystery of what doomed the flight that killed 228 people.

“There was a crazy stall, and basically it was falling out of the sky.  We can take this guy and make it fall out of the sky,” remarked Dorobantu. Things that they’d never be able to do with a full-sized, manned jumbo jet.

The students also envisage the low cost plane flying over disaster scenes, or farm fields: “Imagine in search and rescue, hurricane Katrina where lots of people are stuck on their roof during the flood,” said project lead, Andrei Dorobantu.

The Edina native explains, “Our little hobby system here flies for 30 minutes.” Dorobantu says drones like the ones their team is working on, is relatively cheap, “Couple hundred dollars, maybe $200 for the kit.”

Add the computer equipment and man-hours putting it together, and this little radio controlled airplane is probably worth around $10,000; a fraction of the cost of a military grade aircraft.

It can be mounted with a camera, so a farmer could use it to look over crops — or livestock.

Sensors could be placed on the plane that could detect any number of things like moisture levels or heat.

Wildlife managers could use this view to track herds of wild animals.

But nothing like that can happen just yet.

Even though the students have wired the guts of the plane with equipment to chart its course with a computer – Federal Aviation Administration rules prohibit it.

For now, the pilot has to use radio controls to fly the plane, and only in specific places.

In 2015, the FAA restriction will be lifted, allowing these University of Minnesota students, and other groups to get airspace, and to control the planes electronically.

Source: KAAL TV