Infrastructure
The RECUV Unmanned Aircraft Fleet consists of aircraft ranging in size and performance from the 1-lb, 14-inch wingspan CUMAV, to the 11-ft wingspan, 45-lb Pilatus P1-A that can carry up to 12 pounds of payload. With a 10 ft wingspan, the AresMax is the second generation of the original Ares UAS used in the first Ad Hoc UAS & Ground Network (AUGNet) experiments. Electric-powered NexSTAR UAS are the workhorses for current networking experiments. One of the four Tempest UAS, designed for in-situ sensing in severe thunderstorms, was the first UAS to penetrate and sample supercell thunderstorms. All unmanned aircraft are flown under Federal Aviation Administration Certificates of Authorization (COAs).
The RECUV Indoor Flying Robot Lab (R-IFRL) contains a 30 ft x 60 ft x 20 ft motion capture system housed in 1800 ft2 of space in the new RECUV Aerorobotics Lab. The RECUV Robot Sensor Network is comprised of a team of iRobot Create robots and Smart Quadrotor Unmanned Autonomous Demonstrator (SQUAD) aerial robots equipped with onboard sensors, computation, and wireless networking. The hardware components of the test bed include: iRobot Create and SQUAD robots equipped with ad-hoc wireless communication; stationary communication nodes; three PC computers connected to a base node to control and monitor the system; and four overhead cameras to provide robot pose. Sensors onboard the robots include cameras and magnetic tracking beacons.
The mobile Ground Control Station (GCS) is a command, control, and communications (C3) center housed inside a customized 15-passenger van. The mobile GCS is equipped with VHF voice radios, a 900-MHz mechanical tracking antenna for direct UAS command and control, and a 2.4-GHz phased-array WiFi antenna to support the autonomy-enabling NetUAS C3 architecture.​
The Unmanned Vehicle Systems Integration Lab is located in the Engineering College’s Â鶹ÊÓƵy Learning Center. It houses Computing facilities, electronics work benches, and test equipment enable hardware/software integration and hardware-in-the-loop testing of mobile sensing systems. The Unmanned Systems Fabrication Lab, located in the Engineering Center, provides software design tools, machine, and power tools for unmanned vehicle design and construction.​
A new Low-Speed Wind Tunnel has been built in the . The wind tunnel is an open-return Wenham (Blower) type low-speed tunnel designed and manufactured by . It has a 0.8 m square test-section that is 5 m long. The tunnel is driven by a 100 HP motor to achieve test section velocities up to approximately 65 m/s (Mach 0.2). Significant portions of the test section are constructed from cast optical-grade acrylic providing unobstructed optical access throughout most of the field.