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.