The Idea
For our Principles of Engineering project at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, we wanted to recreate a physical version of a bombing video game. In standard bombing video games, the user is flying an airplane in a forward facing view. When close to a bombing target, the user will press a button to switch to a top down or birds-eye view. When over the target, a bomb drop button can be pressed, and a bomb will drop. To recreate this, we modified a remote controlled airplane that we modified to have a wireless video camera and a bombing mechanism.
For our final airplane, the user can take off and fly either by watching the actual airplane or using the live video feed on the laptop. Then, when wanting to bomb, the user will move one of the joysticks on the airplane fully to one direction. This will make the camera point downwards and be stabilized by a gyro, so that it always points downwards regardless of the angle of attack of the airplane. Finally, a switch can be flipped to release one of the four bombs on board.
