Spirit XI made by the 2019 Team is Team Animus Ferus’ first hexacopter design; it is a completely new, custom-fabricated UAV designed to accomplish the objectives in the most point-efficient manner possible. Spirit XI builds on the success and lessons learned from prior competitions, incorporates new research and technology, and was able to achieve a remarkably competitive overall score.

Designed to be able to complete the 2019 Mission Objectives, Spirit XI is able to fly farther and faster than the team’s previous craft, Spirit X. Spirit XI’s maximum speed is 40 mph and its maximum flight range is 8 miles, a significant upgrade over Spirit X, which had a maximum speed of 25 mph and a maximum flight range of 4.3 miles.

Spirit XI was stress tested, analyzed, and meticulously planned out, with dozens of different designs being vetted before the final current design was chosen. Each major part was designed by the Team to better fit their individual requirements than anything else on the open market.

When designing each part, certain factors had to be taken into account. Not only did each part have to be resilient enough to withstand the full spectrum of forces that were going to be applied to it during the course of the flight, but some parts also had to be made to protect more dangerous or fragile inner workings, all the while weight had to be cut wherever possible.

During the Air Drop portion of the mission, Spirit XI dropped Vale I, the team’s UGV, which is designed to transport a water bottle payload to its final destination. The rover was one particularly noteworthy case of productive custom design. The rover had to be capable of not only high strength to avoiding breaking on landing but also being extremely light in order to fit into the tight mission parameters of the competition. To accomplish this our team used a NylonX carbon fiber filament for strength and rigidity, while also maintaining a low weight. At competition our team had the only rover fully capable of completing the mission parameters of landing and driving to a secondary location.

Spirit XI flew in the 2019 competition where Team Animus Ferus managed to secure another second place performance following Spirt X at the 2018 competition. Making exemplary use of its advanced airdrop system, Spirit XI managed to successfully perform airdrop of our rover on the target location, all the while avoiding numerous obstacles.

Finally, the day of the Flight came. Spirit XI managed to secure a second-place flight-line finish, overall coming in first nationally and second internationally.