INV-X1 "Alatus"

Overview

Alatus is a custom fixed-wing UAV I'm designing and building from scratch — not from a kit. The goal was to go through the full process myself: sizing the aircraft, modeling every structural component, 3D printing the airframe, and building a custom avionics system to fly it.

Aerodynamic Design

Before touching CAD, I worked through the aerodynamics by hand — applying fluid mechanics principles to size the wing and estimate performance. This gave me the numbers I needed (wing area, aspect ratio, expected lift) before committing to a structure.

Structural Design

The wing ribs and fuselage were modeled in SolidWorks using surface modeling techniques. I paid close attention to geometry, weight distribution, center-of-gravity placement, and how heat from onboard electronics would need to be managed — all while keeping every part realistically manufacturable on an FDM printer.

Fabrication

Every structural part is 3D printed with FDM, using heat-set inserts and mechanical fasteners at the joints so the airframe can be assembled, disassembled, and repaired rather than glued together permanently — durability and maintainability were a big part of the design brief for myself.

Avionics & Software

The avionics system is being built around an ATmega328P microcontroller, an MPU-6050 IMU for orientation sensing, and an nRF24L01 transceiver for wireless telemetry. This is the part I'm actively working on now — writing the embedded code that reads the IMU, stabilizes the aircraft in flight, and streams telemetry back to the ground.

Status

Currently in progress — the airframe is built, and I'm working through the avionics and flight stabilization software next. More updates (and hopefully flight footage) to come.