Texas A&M Senior Capstone · Chief Engineer
I served as Chief Engineer for a nine-person team that designed, built, and tested an electric vertical-flight rocket.
Project overview
The project centered on an electric vehicle designed to take off vertically, stabilize in hover, translate laterally, and return to a designated landing area.
The physical vehicle, named Neo, was paired with a MATLAB and Simulink digital twin named Morpheus. The model represented the vehicle’s forces, moments, actuators, and flight dynamics.
My role
My role extended beyond team coordination. I worked across requirements, trade studies, CAD, controls, simulation, wiring, assembly, integration, testing, and troubleshooting.
I also coordinated the interfaces between propulsion, structures, GNC, avionics, and the digital twin throughout the project.
System design
A 105 mm electric ducted fan and 12S LiPo battery provided the vehicle’s lift.
Four servo-actuated vanes redirected the EDF exhaust to generate pitch, roll, and yaw moments.
A Pixhawk 6X integrated inertial, GPS, and LiDAR measurements with the autonomous controller.
Simulink models represented the vehicle’s six-degree-of-freedom motion and control response.
Technical highlights
Propulsion
At 4.605 kg, the vehicle required approximately 45.2 N of thrust to hover. Bench testing found less thrust than the theoretical rating, but still produced a tested thrust-to-weight ratio of approximately 1.28.
Attitude control
The guide vanes were designed to recover from a 15-degree pitch disturbance within one second. Initial analysis showed that the original vane area could not sufficiently counter the EDF reaction torque.
The surface area was doubled, increasing the modeled maximum lift from approximately 3.3 N to 7 N per vane.
Testing and validation
Testing progressed in stages so that propulsion, actuation, and control problems could be addressed before the complete system was powered.
Measured thrust and reaction torque across the throttle range.
Verified servo response, vane direction, and range of motion.
Tested autonomous corrective control-vane commands.
Integrated propulsion, sensing, actuation, and control.
Neutral
Commanded
What I learned
This project taught me that hardware testing is essential and that integration is often the most difficult part of development. Analysis and manufacturer specifications gave us a starting point, but the physical vehicle exposed problems that were impossible to see on paper. Bringing propulsion, structures, avionics, sensing, and controls together required repeated testing and adjustment before the system could operate as intended.
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