Abstract
This article describes the design, fabrication, and flight test evaluation of a morphing geometry quadcopter capable of changing its intersection angle in-flight. The experiments were conducted at the Aircraft Computational and Resource Aware Fault Tolerance (AirCRAFT) Lab, Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO. The flight test matrix included flights in a “Figure-8” trajectory in two different morphing configurations (21° and 27°), as well as the nominal geometry configuration, two different flight velocities (1.5 m/s and 2.5 m/s), two different number of waypoints, and in three planes—horizontal, inclined, and double inclined. All the experiments were conducted using standard, off-the-shelf flight controller (Pixhawk) and autopilot firmware. Simulations of the morphed geometry indicate a reduction in pitch damping (42% for 21° morphing and 57.3% for 27° morphing) and roll damping (63.5% for 21° morphing and 65% for 27° morphing). Flight tests also demonstrated that the dynamic stability in roll and pitch dynamics were reduced, but the quadcopter was still stable under morphed geometry conditions. Morphed geometry also has an effect on the flight performance—with a higher number of waypoints (30) and higher velocity (2.5 m/s), the roll dynamics performed better as compared to the lower waypoints and lower velocity condition. The yaw dynamics remained consistent through all the flight conditions, and were not significantly affected by asymmetrical morphing of the quadcopter geometry. We also determined that higher waypoint and flight velocity conditions led to a small performance improvement in tracking the desired trajectory as well.
Highlights
Paper, we present present the the results results from fromflight flight test testexperiments experiments of of an an asymmetrical asymmetrical morphing morphing geometry quadcopter [21]
We describe the fabrication and flight tests of a quadcopter capable of morphing its geometry in flight by changing its intersection angle
The quadcopter can morph from a nominal geometry to two morphed conditions, 21 and 27 —the limits allowed by its physical dimensions
Summary
Multi-copters, including commonly used platforms such as quadcopters, hexacopters, octocopters, or their variants, are popular as base aerial platforms for many civilian applications, including remote sensing [1,2,3], aerial imaging [4,5], firefighting [6,7], environmental measurement [8,9,10], law enforcement [11,12,13], disaster relief and emergency management [14,15,16,17,18], situational awareness [19]. Quadcopters can be considered to be representative of this general class of aircraft, and can be maneuvered by varying the power of the four motors symmetrically or asymmetrically in order to achieve translational and rotational flight While these platforms are well suited to execute a wide variety of aerial tasks, their physical geometry plays a significant role in defining the applicability of a particular platform for a particular task; for instance, if the Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) is required to carry a suite. A compromise option that carry a higher payload, while remaining capable of navigating through confined spaces, would be a would allow the quadcopter to carry a higher payload, while remaining capable of navigating platform that could change or morph from one geometry to another geometry, reducing its footprint in through confined spaces, would be a platform that could change or morph from one geometry to the process
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