Engineering Universities Benefit from Typhon UDX Drone Design Software

Thanks to the accessibility of drone technologies, many engineering universities around the world rely on drone design-build-fly projects to offer hands-on engineering experiences to their students.  Universities such as the Izmir Institute of Technology (IYTE) are choosing to augment these experiences using Typhon UDX, a new integrated software for drone design, analysis, optimization and simulation.

The Salvator team of graduate students at IYTE  was tasked with developing a Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) drone as their course project.  The students leveraged Typhon UDX: The UAV Design Explorer to help them create the drone system within a limited timeline and budget.  Thanks to the user-friendly interface and varied analysis and simulation tools, the students were able to create their design in Typhon UDX in a short time with no prior training on the software.

The real-time flight performance prediction capabilities allowed the students to identify a number of design improvements that would increase the stability and control during hover, transition and forward flight.  Utilizing Typhon’s flight simulation feature, the pilot was able to identify flight characteristics unique to their aircraft which would be important during flight testing. The students praised the advantage of being able to quickly design and test their aircraft and control code in a simulation environment to identify potential optimizations and problems that would occur during real flight.

Dr Ünver Özkol, associate professor at IYTE noted that the software offered capabilities far exceeding their expectations, but the most attractive feature was its ease of use, allowing students to get a deep intuition of how any design characteristic contributes to the aircraft’s performance, stability and control.  These insights allowed the students to learn important lessons that would be otherwise missed given the limited time for the project. Dr Ünver concluded that “the project was a tremendous learning experience for our students, and Typhon UDX was a big part of it.” After a successfully completing their class project, the team is now looking forward to submitting their design to a number of design competitions.

Typhon UDX is now available for licensing to academic institutions and enterprises.  For more information, please contact ComQuest Ventures LLC at www.comquestventures.com