Case Study: Analysis and Optimal Design of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles By: Dr. Craig Rosenberg Tel: (206) 552-9898 Email Dr. Rosenberg Website: www.userinterfaceexpertwitness.com

The client was interested in designing a new Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for the Department of Defense. As part of this work the client wanted a thorough analysis of the various design tradeoffs that could be made when designing the unmanned aerial vehicle. These design tradeoffs that needed to be made included, but were not limited to, size of the vehicle, weight of the vehicle, power requirements, sensor load capabilities, fuel tank size, fuel burn rates, cost, etc.

In order for Global Technica to get a handle on all of the various dimensions associated with the design of a new unmanned aerial vehicle for the client, an advanced analytical model and simulation was created that allowed the client to analyze the tradeoffs associated with all of the independent variables by running many different simulations with many different configurations of unmanned aerial vehicles, running many different kinds of unmanned aerial vehicle missions.

This simulation was highly successful for the client as it allowed them to converge on the optimal unmanned aerial vehicle configuration prior to building any costly prototypes. Because the simulation was so useful for the client, they asked Global Technica to incorporate the unmanned aerial vehicle simulation into a much larger wireless communication and command and control simulation to bring the capabilities of the unmanned aerial vehicle simulation to the larger simulation for the client. Once this work was done, the client had the capability to utilize the functionality of the unmanned aerial vehicle simulation inside the wireless communication and command and control simulation.