M-Fly competes in autonomous aerial competition for the first time, led by EECS students

Building multiple aircraft to compete in annual competitions sounds like a job for aerospace engineers, and sure, it is. But when one of the competitions is called the Student Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) Competition, and it’s hosted by RoboNation – then it also sounds like a job for EECS students, and that’s also true!

M-Fly is a student team that builds aircraft to compete in the SAE Aero Design and SUAS competitions. This past year, they brought two different aircraft to the SAE Aero Design East competition, and earned four trophies, including 3rd place overall in the Advanced Class. 

Meanwhile, an entirely distinct group of M-Fly students were preparing for a different challenge – flying an autonomous aircraft at SUAS.

This year’s team achieved something it had never done before – compete at the competition! And that happened with the help of Chief Engineer Yi Ling Wu, and Autonomous Flight Systems Lead Eva Manabat, both undergraduate students studying computer engineering.

This is their story.

Wu and Manabat joined the M-Fly team as first year students. Their grit, determination, and talent helped them rise quickly to leadership roles on the first M-Fly team to compete at SUAS. They did this with the autonomous aircraft known as MAT-5, which they each had a hand in creating from the inside out.

The MAT-5 did not win any awards, but it did compete, and that was enough to earn its place in M-Fly history.

The following Q&A by Wu (currently a fourth year student) and Manabat (currently a third year student) provides insights into why they joined M-Fly, their contributions to the team, why they are looking for more EECS students to join the autonomous team, and what they value about being on a student team.

Why did you join M-Fly?

Yi Ling Wu:

Before I even started at Michigan, I knew that I wanted to join a project team because of how hands-on Michigan is as an engineering school. Coming to Ann Arbor is the first time I saw stars in the sky because there’s so much light pollution back in New York City, so I wanted to join a team that combined aerospace and EECS work. During my freshman year, one of the people from my high school was a team lead on M-Fly, so he onboarded me.

Eva Manabat:

I knew I wanted to join an engineering project team because I enjoyed doing robotics in high school. At FestiFall, I looked for a team with a focus on software, and eventually chose M-Fly because I liked its culture and the people.

Tell us how you became subteam Leads, and what your responsibilities were.

Yi Ling Wu:

In my first year, I went to a lot of the meetings having to do with manufacturing so I learned a lot of those skills, and eventually they trusted me enough to build an entire plane by myself. I was elected Autonomous Plane Manufacturing Lead the following year, and managed the MAT-3 and MAT-4 aircrafts.

During this time, I experimented with composites materials to find the best layering combination for the shell of the aircraft structure-wise. And I acquired machinery and hardware-related skills such as soldering, laser cutting, and mold routing.

By April of 2023, my manufacturing lead background combined with my EECS coursework put me in a really good position to be the Autonomous Plane Chief Engineer, and I was elected into the position. Not being able to bridge the connection between aerospace design and EECS implementations has been a problem in the past.

I managed 7 team leads. Four of them were aircraft related: the structures, manufacturing, propulsion, and aerodynamics leads. And the other three were EECS related: the computer vision software, flight systems software, and hardware leads.

I coordinated R&D projects such as elliptical wings and less cambered airfoils, and I was responsible for optimizing aircraft design and performance, as well as creating design reports and presentations.

Eva Manabat:

When I was a first-year student, there were two software teams in M-Fly, flight systems and computer vision. I had worked with some computer vision in the past and wanted to explore a different area of software, so I joined flight systems, and I really enjoyed it. It was a small and close-knit team of around four people, and we bonded very quickly. After a year, I decided to run for the lead position.

When I became lead, I focused heavily on recruiting more EECS students into M-Fly, and that worked. A lot of people attended our first meeting, and as the year progressed, I oversaw about eight team members that really contributed.

Among my contributions were collaborating on a search algorithm for an autonomous plane that must navigate a set of waypoints and perform dynamic obstacle avoidance using ROS 2, Python, and ArduPilot. I also programmed two servo motors to rotate a barrel mechanism for payload delivery in CircuitPython.

Tell us about the competition?

Yi Ling Wu:

In this competition, three aircrafts are flying in the air at the same time, autonomously. We had to fly through a series of waypoints and spot targets on the ground, and drop corresponding payloads. This is really dangerous, because these are huge vehicles flying in the air, and it’s also pretty hard to do everything autonomously.

This is the first time any M-Fly team was able to qualify to go to the competition. We were under a lot of pressure because we had never done it before, and there was also a severe shortage in our budget. 

About 12 team members came to at least some part of the week-long competition in Maryland. We didn’t perform as well as we’d hoped, and part of that was due to the heat wave going on in Maryland at the time, which were conditions we never encountered during testing in Michigan. It messed up the density of our wings, and our electronics kept overheating. I’m really glad we were able to go. We learned a lot, and talked to a lot of different teams. 

Eva Manabat:

It was awesome, and a historic moment for M-Fly. I was on the front line and witnessed the other teams’ takeoffs up close. It was simultaneously nerve-wracking and exciting, as we knew that everything had led up to this moment.

Although we didn’t perform as well as we had hoped due to the heat wave affecting our electronics, we learned so much and it was a bonding experience for all of us.

What was your favorite part of being on the team?

Yi Ling Wu: 

Working with my team was my favorite part.  I got incredibly lucky; everyone was so reliable, so passionate, and so talented. My team really inspired me, and pushed me to do more and learn more so I could be a better leader.

Being part of M-Fly for these past 3 years has definitely been a lot of work, and I’ve experienced a lot of roadblocks. But seeing our aircraft fly in competition this past year for the 1st time made it one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.

I love all the people I have met on M-Fly. I know they’ll always have my back. We studied together, we went to football games together, we worked out together. They’re irreplaceable in my life.

Eva Manabat:

The people. I was able to work with people who are just as passionate about building something as I am, and I met some of my closest friends through M-Fly. Despite everyone having different backgrounds and skill sets, we were able to come together and build something really cool. 

Another one of my favorite parts was working with engineering majors that were different from my own. I’m a computer engineering major and M-Fly has primarily aerospace majors, with some mechanical and electrical engineers, and I loved learning bits and pieces from everybody.

Why does M-Fly need EECS students on their team?

Eva Manabat already described how she personally recruited EECS students to the team after just her first year.

Yi Ling Wu:

The autonomous competition in particular is very EECS heavy because of all the electronics on board, and all the obstacle avoidance algorithms that we need to create and implement. I think that’s been overlooked in the past. I’ve been trying to push for more EECS support from professors to give us feedback, and recruiting EECS students. Yes, it’s an aircraft, but we need EECS expertise for everything inside the aircraft.

My grand vision for the EECS side of M-Fly is for us to design our own PCBs and to build our control software from the ground up for our specific needs. We still use off-the-shelf tools and adapt it to fit our needs – but that’s like fitting a rectangle into a circular hole. It just doesn’t work that well.

What are your future plans?

Yi Ling Wu:

I’m applying to PhD programs in autonomous systems. I love being able to do research, and I also love being able to do hands-on work to see what I can create myself. I won’t have a specific position, but I love the team. I’ll always be there to support them.

Eva Manabat:

I have two more years before I graduate, and I plan on going abroad next year, so I ran for Webmaster and Social Media Chair. This way, I can contribute remotely, and they are positions I find enjoyable while also aligning with my skills. I still plan on helping out with flight systems and the team whenever I can.