Autonomous unmanned aerial system design, development, integration and verification

This document describes the design, development and verification of an autonomous unmanned aerial system (UAS), named Grey Owl, as developed by the Technion Aerial Systems (TAS) team. The team consists of members from the Aerospace Eng. and Computer Science faculties. For its first participation in the AUVSI Student UAS competition, the team has designed and manufactured its own custom airframe, suited for the competition's missions. The team also integrated it with full autonomous capabilities, a high quality stabilized imaging payload and reliable, independent communications to the Mission Ground Station (MGS), while keeping safety a foremost priority through the entire process. With its main goal to assist the fire containment efforts, the Grey Owl UAV is thoroughly designed and tested to withstand high velocity winds while providing real time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR).