Weekly wrap up #2 and 3

For weeks 3 and 4 has been more concentrated in the building aspect of the project. But those weeks were uttermost disappointing. The goal was to finally create the quadcopter so I can start on the variable manipulation. However I am currently behind schedule because of some unfortunate accidents.

Ideally the wiring of the quadcopter should look like this:

Motors: mechanically rotates the propellers

Electric speed controllers (ESC): Controls the speed of the motors

Receiver: Connects the flight controller to the handheld controller

Flight control: Computer of the quadcopter; has all the sensors to allow the quadcopter to fly

Battery: holds the charge

The reason behind the unfortunate accident was because I plugged a 11.1 V battery into transmitter and flight controller which resulted both micro chips to smoke. This accident hindered the completion of the the control quadcopter. So testing has to be pushed back to a week or two.

So with this in mind, I have only this so far:

Which are just the the electrical speed controller (ESC) wires connected to the motor which are all connected to the power distribution board (the power distribution board just distributes all the current and voltage from the battery, similar to how an outlet works). On the bright side I was able to learn soldering techniques for small micro chip boards like the power distributor board, and the for the short time I had flight controller, the software to calibrate the quadcopter.

All parts lost in the project are currently being replaced and will take two to three days for it to be delivered. The current plan for week 4 is to finally finish the building and test.

Once I get my parts the process of building should be easy and not take as long as it did for me this week. Despite the current drawbacks, I have learned quite a lot and what not to do during the construction of the quadcopter. Most importantly I learned to move on and fix my problems.

Weekly Wrap Up #1

According to the syllabus this week I am suppose to start building my control quadcopter and start reading the research papers. So far I have read paper Influence of Aerodynamics on Quadrotor Dynamics, and bought the parts for the quadcopter. With the research Mannat and I have conducted separately, we were able to help each other and list down the appropriate the equations that will help with our projects. And just a clarification, Mannat and I are doing separate projects just the same object of manipulation. He is working on how to increase vertical speed of a quadcopter, while I am working on the endurance of the quadcopter. Here are some pictures of the work we have done so far:

The picture above describes the standard thrust equation 

This picture depicts the the different dimensions of the quadcopter: pitch, roll, and yaw and the equation to calculate that particular dimension. The the equation in the bottom corner is the equation to calculate vertical speed. 

The picture conveys the static thrust equation for the quadcopter. We were able to derive it to prove that in order for the quadcopter to hover it must be equation to its mass x gravity. We also found out that power is portional to thrust, but inversely proportional to diameter. This particular information will help out my research into blade length and thrust.

This picture is similar to the last but we added the equation of the theoretical flight time of my quadcopter with the battery I will be using. The maximum time should be about 5.2 minutes. But with all the environmental factors and inefficiencies of the quadcopter, I am predicting about an actual 3 mins of flight time. The goal is to reach as close to 5.2 minutes.

All of the work and equations we have done so far will be put into a engineering notebook. I plan to post pictures of the notebook in the future. For week 2 I plan to continue my research and build the control quadcopter.

-Adriane Inocencio

Introduction

Quadcopters today are probably one of the most popular commercial RC rotor blade aircraft on the market. For those who don't how a quadcopter works, the design comes with 4 motors somewhat perpendicular from each other. The quadcopter moves in the dimension of X, Y, and Z, as well having dimensions of pitch, yaw and roll. The figure below can help dictate which dimension goes where.

 

Their simple design and high maneuverability, allows it to have a range of different purposes. However the unfortunate downside of quadcopter is its power consumption. Many commercial quadcopters have a short flight time and it is my goal to address the power consumption of quadcopter. With the internship I got at Kutta Technologies, I will be looking into optimizing the quadcopter to have a lower power consumption. Some of my original ideas of solving this included: adding solar panels, making a aerodynamic body, and increasing/decreasing propeller length. With research I have done so far, I am confident to add a few things of my original list. I will be adding: number of propellers, ducted propellers, and decreasing arm radius. Thus I hope all factors I have presented will help address the endurance of the quadcopter.

A quick summary of what I will be doing the next 12 weeks. I have taken upon myself to read a few scholarly papers that will help with my research: Influence of Aerodynamics on Quadrotor Dynamics, The Role of Propeller Aerodynamics in the Model Quadrotor UAV, Control and Optimization of a Variable-Pitch Quadrotor with Minimum Power Consumption, and Quadrotor Helicopter Flight Dynamics and Control: Theory and Experiment. The first few weeks I will be reading those papers to get some ideas. I will also accompany these papers with college literature such as Aircraft Design: A conceptual approach, and Airplane Aerodynamics and Performance. With the reasech I am doing I will also be starting the building of the control quadcopter. After the control quadcopter is built and I have read most of my literature, the remaining weeks will be addressing the list of factors (as addressed in the previous paragraph). I will be building, designing, and testing many of these factors that may affect the endurance of the quadcopter. I will also be testers at Kutta Technologies and helping them with testing UAV software.

Like any cliche tech or software developer, I know with these steps I am closer to making the world a better place.