Helen obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Aeronautics & Astronautics from UW in 2019, and her Master’s in 2021 with a concentration in Controls. Since joining the lab in 2017, she has worked on projects involving GPS denied navigation systems, aerial mapping of wildfires, wilderness search & rescue, experimental aircraft design, and vertical takeoff and landing systems. As Operations Lead, she manages the lab’s flight testing program, as well as pilot training, and is an experienced pilot of both fixed-wing and multirotor aircraft. When she’s not flying drones, she enjoys horseback riding, writing, and backpacking.
Publications
Beyond Visual Line-of-Sight Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle for Search and Locate Operations
Madewell, E.,
Pollack, E.,
Kuni, H.,
Johri, S.,
Broyles, D.,
Vagners, J.,
and Leung, K.
The deployment of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in wilderness search and locate operations has gained attention in the past few years. To help expand the effective search radius and provide more flexible UAV search capabilities, we propose a Reliable Uninterrupted Communications Kit for UAV Search (RUCKUS), a backpackable Beyond Visual Line-of-Sight UAV system utilizing an intermediate "relay UAV" to provide an uninterrupted communications link between the ground station and the search UAV. The proposed system is designed to be self-contained, modular, and affordable and can provide continuous sensor data and control flow between the search UAV and ground station, enabling the users to receive real-time video feedback from the search UAV and dynamically update the UAV’s search strategy. In this paper, we describe the proposed system architecture and characterization of the signal strength via a number of experimental flight tests. The end goal is to develop a flexible, cost-effective, and portable BVLOS solution to aid first responders and alike in safety-critical operations where extending the operational range can significantly improve mission success.
@inproceedings{MadewellPollackEtAl2024,author={Madewell, E. and Pollack, E. and Kuni, H. and Johri, S. and Broyles, D. and Vagners, J. and Leung, K.},booktitle={{AIAA Scitech Forum}},title={Beyond Visual Line-of-Sight Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle for Search and Locate Operations},year={2024},category={afsl},img={MadewellPollackEtAl2024.png},owner={karenl7}}
