Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Faculty and students at Cornell University have built an unmanned airplane with its own on-board, embedded control system. The large-scale model plane flies by accessing coordinates from an off-the-shelf GPS unit.

"The plane is capable of GPS guided flight, surveillance, and is very modular," said Kevin Kornegay, one of the faculty advisors for the project.

Last year, the group won an Innovation Excellence Award from Microsoft Research to continue their previous work in designing an autopilot system for a large scale model aircraft. Schools around the globe received awards from the Microsoft Research University Relations program to enable them to conduct research in emerging technologies.

"Our previous design represented a very early prototype for an autonomous aircraft. The autopilot system was extremely heavy, it lacked software functionality, but it was a strong version one," said Kornegay.