This thesis presents the conceptual design of the Blind-Spot-1, a hand-launched fixed-wing small unmanned aerial vehicle (SUAV) developed at the Brno University of Technology, together with an investigation into bone-inspired porous infill structures for its additively manufactured wing.
Part I addresses the conceptual design itself. A market analysis of contemporary fixed-wing SUAVs in the 1–5 kg class establishes the operational envelope of comparable systems and identifies three capability gaps relevant to the BS-1 concept: limited sensor performance per unit mass, slow field deployment, and a modest endurance to weight ratio. From these gaps a design specification is derived, defining a 5.5 kg take-off mass, a 2.5 m wingspan in three modular sections, hand-launch capability, a target endurance of 60–90 minutes, and a high-performance EO/IR payload as the primary sensor suite. The aircraft is configured as a high-wing, pusher-propeller, V-tail platform with an MH 42 aerofoil, a piecewise-tapered planform with polyhedral outer panels, and a carbon-fibre spar in a FDM PLA airframe. Aerodynamic and stability analysis is performed in XFLR5 and XFOIL across loiter and cruise. A modular avionics and propulsion package is sized around a T-Motor MN3510 / APC 15×8E combination, a 6S 16 Ah LiPo battery, and a Gremsy VIO F1 radiometric EO/IR gimbal. Performance analysis and comparison with the AeroVironment RQ-11B Raven indicate that the BS-1 achieves a 95-minute mission endurance and carries a 854 g EO/IR payload, meeting or exceeding the benchmark on both metrics while remaining within the same operational range and launch envelope.
Part II investigates the application of the Wu et al. bone-like porous-infill topology optimisation method to the BS-1 wing. The method is reimplemented from scratch as a 3D Python optimiser, validated on a rectangular test beam, and demonstrated on a representative slice of the BS-1 wing cross-section. A filter-radius sensitivity study identifies the geometric limit at which the method ceases to binarise cleanly on thin airfoil domains and establishes the Pareto-optimal filter radius for this geometry. The discussion concludes that, although the method converges on the slice, bone-like infill is not the optimal structural choice for the modular BS-1 wing; the compact multi-axis-loaded components of the airframe the wing-root fitting, motor mount, camera-bay frame, and V-tail hinges are identified as the natural application domain for future work.