Modelling, design, and prototyping of a coaxial variable-tilt multicopter

Description

An alternative drone solution, inspired by the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, involves independently adjusting the rotation axis of each propeller blade. To further augment thrust with little morphological change, the rotor units are placed into coaxial configuration. Despite the mechanical intricacy, this approach introduces thrust vectoring, enhancing manoeuvrability by providing increased controllable degrees of freedom. This overactuated system improves UAV dexterity, enabling arbitrary trajectories, poses, and failure redundancy. Together, these approaches present promising solutions to overcome the limitations of traditional drone configurations. These advancements open up various use cases for highly manoeuvrable UAVs, including tasks such as precise inspection of infrastructure for 3D modelling, agile navigation in complex environments for search and rescue operations, and efficient surveillance in scenarios necessitating rapid and adaptable movement.

Key skills/interests:

Mathematical modelling, mechanical modelling, system identification, MATLAB and Simulink.

Expected outputs:

1x MSc (Eng), 1x Journal/Conference paper in a leading publication.

Supervisors:

Arnold Pretorius