Our plan in to use three propellars to steer the cansat. By controlling the frequency of rotation of each propeller we will be able to control pitch and yaw. Roll control will be to rotate the arm of one of the propellers.
The small formfactor of the Cansat requires us to store the propellers in the body on ascent. When we have reached apogee we will release the three spring-loaded arms and fire up the propellers.
These are the models for the mechanical functioning of our CanSat. All models are under development, but this shows our ideas and design philosophy.
Current model
Current model unfolded
First complete concept
Current model of arm that rotates in order to control yaw during descent
Concept of yaw-controlling arm
First prototype of an arm swinging out from inside the body to a position where the propellers can spin freely
CanSat Trident will use a plethora of sensors to give the flight computer the most info possible, in addition to maximize the science we will be able to do post flight.
Our current plan is to use an IMU and GPS for accurate positioning; gas, temperature, pressure and humidity sensors for atmospheric research; two cameras, one in the visible spectrum and one in IR to gather data on vegetation and emissions from our flight path.
We will be developing most of the software ourselves. Libraries may be used. The software is currently in the startup phase.
We have developed simulations for processing the data once we recieve it with our ground station.