Design, development, and flight testing of a high endurance micro quadrotor helicopter Conference Paper uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 by the American Helicopter Society International, Inc. All rights reserved. jwinslow@umd.edu. This paper describes the experimental design studies conducted to maximize the hover endurance of a MAV- scale quadrotor helicopter by careful design/choice of the individual subsystems while understanding their interdependencies. The different subsystems of the quadrotor that were examined include the rotors, motors, electronic speed controllers, gear transmission systems, battery, and airframe structure. An optimized MAV- scale rotor with a diameter of 110 mm and a figure of merit of 0.67 served as the basis for the full vehicle design. Brushed and brushless motor systems were paired with the optimized rotor and were examined for maximum system level efficiency and capability to produce the required thrust. Propulsion systems using brushed motors with speed controllers and the optimum gear ratio showed up to 35% improvement in efficiency over brushless outrunner motors with speed controllers. Lithium-ion polymer batteries were compared and evaluated on voltage drop-off characteristics and achievable endurance vs. weight. Quadrotor airframe weight has been minimized to 7.4% of the gross weight, representing a 30 - 50% decrease compared existing similarly sized quadrotors. The highest endurance was obtained using brushed motors with a 5.33:1 gear ratio and a 650mAh battery. Presently, the longest continuous hover endurance achieved with this design is 31 minutes.

published proceedings

  • American Helicopter Society International - 6th AHS International Specialists' Meeting on Unmanned Rotorcraft System 2015: Platform Design, Autonomy, Operator Workload Reduction and Network Centric Operations

author list (cited authors)

  • Winslow, J., Benedict, M., Hrishikeshavan, V., & Chopra, I.

complete list of authors

  • Winslow, J||Benedict, M||Hrishikeshavan, V||Chopra, I

publication date

  • January 2015