Design of a cruise control system prototype for the GT500's airplane

Abstract

The GT500 aircraft is an experimental light sport aircraft designed to provide general aviation pilots an inexpensive way to fly. Even though these aircrafts can fly up-to four hours, they are mostly used for short recreational flights around the home airport. However, there are some pilots that fly these aircrafts long periods of time which can lead to an increase of workload on themselves. The autopilot system provides a solution to this problem by reducing the amount of work that pilots must performed during these flights. Unfortunately, the cost of these systems poses a big financial constraint to the owners of these aircrafts. Before implementing the system on the GT-500 aircraft, a team of engineers at George Mason University is integrating a software and hardware into a prototype system that can work equal or better than some of the current systems out in the market. This prototype it's been designed to simulate an autopilot system and to keep the cost significantly less expensive than the cheapest autopilot systems that are sold currently such as the TruTrack. By reducing the cost of this system, it can directly help the owners and pilots of these aircrafts to consider the purchase and installation of this system. A team of engineers at George Mason University have designed an Arduino based prototype system with low cost GPS that was required to pass bench testing before it is finally installed on the aircraft.