Design and Fabrication of Small Vertical-Take-Off-Landing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

Modern UAVs available in the market have well-developed to cater to the countless field of application. UAVs have their own limitations in terms of flight range and manoeuvrability. The traditional fixed-wing UAVs can fly for long distance but require runways or wide-open spaces for take-off and landing. On the other hand, the more trending multirotor UAVs are extremely manoeuvrable but cannot be used for long-distance flights because of their slower speeds and relatively higher consumption of energy. This study proposed the implementation of hybrid VTOL UAV which has the manoeuvring advantage of a multirotor UAV while having the ability to travel fast to reach a further distance. The design methodology and fabrication method are discussed extensively which would be followed by a number of flight tests to prove the concept. The proposed UAV would be equipped with quadcopter motors and a horizontal thrust motor for vertical and horizontal flight modes respectively

Towards Long-endurance Flight: Design and Implementation of a Variable-pitch Gasoline-engine Quadrotor

Majority of today's fixed-pitch, electric-power quadrotors have short flight endurance ($<$ 1 hour) which greatly limits their applications. This paper presents a design methodology for the construction of a long-endurance quadrotor using variable-pitch rotors and a gasoline-engine. The methodology consists of three aspects. Firstly, the rotor blades and gasoline engine are selected as a pair, so that sufficient lift can be comfortably provided by the engine. Secondly, drivetrain and airframe are designed. Major challenges include airframe vibration minimization and power transmission from one engine to four rotors while keeping alternate rotors contra-rotating. Lastly, a PD controller is tuned to facilitate preliminary flight tests. The methodology has been verified by the construction and successful flight of our gasoline quadrotor prototype, which is designed to have a flight time of 2 to 3 hours and a maximum take-off weight of 10 kg.Comment: 6 page

Development of an Indoor Multirotor Testbed for Experimentation on Autonomous Guidance Strategies

Despite the vast popularity of rotary wing unmanned aerial vehicles and research centres that develop their guidance software, there are only a limited number of references that provide an exhaustive description of a step-by-step procedure to build-up a multirotor testbed. In response to such need, the first part of this thesis aims to describe, in detail, the complete procedure to establish and operate an autonomous multirotor unmanned aerial vehicle indoor experimental platform to test and validate guidance, navigation and control strategies. Both hardware and software aspects of the testbed are described to offer a complete understanding of the different aspects. The second part of this thesis focuses on two benchmarks multirotor guidance, navigation and control problems. Initially, the guidance law for an accurate landing manoeuvre is studied. Multirotor usually have a flight time limited to a few minutes. Autonomous landing and docking to a charging station could extend the mission duration of these vehicles. Subsequently, the guidance strategy for the formation flight between two multirotors is considered. In this case, the fundamental goal is an accurate autonomous alignment between two vehicles, each of them behaving as a target and chaser simultaneously. In the last part of this thesis, the problem of minimum energy manoeuvres is tackled. Again, in this case, the motive is to address the limitation in multirotor flight duration. The fundamental objective of this guidance, navigation and control strategy is to determine and implement, in real-time, the minimum energy control histories that transfer the multirotor from its initial point to a given final point. As opposed to conventional guidance strategies, mostly based on proportional-integral-derivative laws, a minimum energy controller allows the vehicle to execute the manoeuvre with a minimum electrical power expenditure

Development of quadcopter for atmospheric data collection

This research aims to develop a quadrotor system as unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs, or drones) for monitoring atmospheric conditions in a targeted area. The system consists of an APM 2.8 arducopter flight controller, Ublox NEO M8N GPS module with compass, Racerstar 920kV 2-4S Brushless Motor, Flysky Receiver FS-iA6B with FS-i6 Remote Control Transmitter, DJI F450 quadcopter frame kits with tall landing gear skid, and a LiPo Battery 3300 mAh 35C. The system is set up and run through a Mission Planner. As for monitoring atmospheric conditions, the system consists of an Arduino Uno ATmega328P, BME280 sensors, and several modules (DS3231 Real-Time Clock (RTC),&nbsp; micro SD card, and 16×2 LCD). Our vehicle with a total weight of 1 kg can fly into space and maneuver to an altitude of more than 200 meters in an average of 10 minutes. Atmospheric conditions such as air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, altitude, and precipitable water vapor can be measured and logged properly from drones. By this development, the system can be applied in the future to detect or measure weather extremes, air pollution, or monitoring aerial topography automatically when equipped with gas sensors and cameras, respectively.This research aims to develop a quadrotor system as unmanned aircraft vehicles (UAVs, or drones) for monitoring atmospheric conditions in a targeted area. The system consists of an APM 2.8 arducopter flight controller, Ublox NEO M8N GPS module with compass, Racerstar 920kV 2-4S Brushless Motor, Flysky Receiver FS-iA6B with FS-i6 Remote Control Transmitter, DJI F450 quadcopter frame kits with tall landing gear skid, and a LiPo Battery 3300 mAh 35C. The system is set up and run through a Mission Planner. As for monitoring atmospheric conditions, the system consists of an Arduino Uno ATmega328P, BME280 sensors, and several modules (DS3231 Real-Time Clock (RTC),&nbsp; micro SD card, and 16×2 LCD). Our vehicle with a total weight of 1 kg can fly into space and maneuver to an altitude of more than 200 meters in an average of 10 minutes. Atmospheric conditions such as air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, altitude, and precipitable water vapor can be measured and logged properly from drones. By this development, the system can be applied in the future to detect or measure weather extremes, air pollution, or monitoring aerial topography automatically when equipped with gas sensors and cameras, respectively

A review of aerial manipulation of small-scale rotorcraft unmanned robotic systems

Small-scale rotorcraft unmanned robotic systems (SRURSs) are a kind of unmanned rotorcraft with manipulating devices. This review aims to provide an overview on aerial manipulation of SRURSs nowadays and promote relative research in the future. In the past decade, aerial manipulation of SRURSs has attracted the interest of researchers globally. This paper provides a literature review of the last 10 years (2008–2017) on SRURSs, and details achievements and challenges. Firstly, the definition, current state, development, classification, and challenges of SRURSs are introduced. Then, related papers are organized into two topical categories: mechanical structure design, and modeling and control. Following this, research groups involved in SRURS research and their major achievements are summarized and classified in the form of tables. The research groups are introduced in detail from seven parts. Finally, trends and challenges are compiled and presented to serve as a resource for researchers interested in aerial manipulation of SRURSs. The problem, trends, and challenges are described from three aspects. Conclusions of the paper are presented, and the future of SRURSs is discussed to enable further research interests

A novel aerial manipulation design, modelling and control for geometric com compensation

International audienceThis paper presents the design and modelling of a new Aerial manipulating system, that resolve a displacement of centre of gravity of the whole system with a mechanical device. A prismatic joint between the multirotor and a robotic arm is introduced to make a centre of mass as close as to the geometric centre of the whole system. This paper details also the geometric and dynamic modelling of a coupled system with a Lagrange formalism and control law with a Closed Loop Inverse Kinematic Algorithm (CLIKA). This dynamic inverse control is validated in a Simulink environment showing the efficiency of our approach

Design and control of next-generation uavs for effectively interacting with environments

In this dissertation, the design and control of a novel multirotor for aerial manipulation is studied, with the aim of endowing the aerial vehicle with more degrees of freedom of motion and stability when interacting with the environments. Firstly, it presents an energy-efficient adaptive robust tracking control method for a class of fully actuated, thrust vectoring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with parametric uncertainties including unknown moment of inertia, mass and center of mass, which would occur in aerial maneuvering and manipulation. The effectiveness of this method is demonstrated through simulation. Secondly, a humanoid robot arm is adopted to serve as a 6-degree-of-freedom (DOF) automated flight testing platform for emulating the free flight environment of UAVs while ensuring safety. Another novel multirotor in a tilt-rotor architecture is studied and tested for coping with parametric uncertainties in aerial maneuvering and manipulation. Two pairs of rotors are mounted on two independently-controlled tilting arms placed at two sides of the vehicle in a H configuration to enhance its maneuverability and stability through an adaptive robust control method. In addition, an impedance control algorithm is deployed in the out loop that modifies the trajectory to achieve a compliant behavior in the end-effector space for aerial drilling and screwing tasks