Morphing Concept for Multirotor UAVs Enabling Stability Augmentation and Multiple-Parcel Delivery

Abstract

This paper presents a novel morphing concept for multirotor Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to optimize the vehicle flight performance during multi-parcel deliveries. Abrupt changes in the vehicle weight distribution during a parcel delivery can cause the UAVs to be unbalanced. This is usually compensated by the vehicle flight control system but the motors may need to operate outside their design range which can deteriorate the stability and performance of the system. Morphing the geometry of a conventional multirotor airframe enables the vehicle to continuously re-balanced itself which improves the overall vehicle performance and safety. The paper derives expressions for the static stability of multirotor UAVs and discusses the experimental implementation of the morphing technology on a Y6 tricopter configuration. Flight test results of multi-parcel delivery scenarios demonstrate the capability of the proposed technology to balance the throttle outputs of all rotors.

Design Methodology for Heavy-Lift Unmanned Aerial Vehicles with Coaxial Rotors

“…The sizing technique is demonstrated for the design of a heavy-lift morphing UAV. The vehicle is designed for multi-parcel deliveries based on a morphing technology proposed in [14]. Experimental flight test results in this paper validate the proposed design methodology for heavy-lift UAVs.…”

“…(15) provides a guideline for the selection of the individual motors which are typically defined in terms of maximum continuous power . To ensure that each motor is operating within the optimal efficiency range, we need to select the motors such that 0.4 ≤ 2 ⁄ ≤ 0.7 as discussed in detail in [14]. Note that for the final selection of each motor above we only consider half of the required nominal power, i.e.…”

“…To enable multi-parcel capabilities, this work considers a UAV design with morphing arms as described in detail in [14]. The proposed concept shown in Fig.…”

“…To implement the morphing concept as proposed in [14], we start from a Y6 tricopter configuration and implement a morphing mechanism which allows the front motor arms to symmetrically sweep along the − plane of the vehicle and thereby change the longitudinal position of the NP. Hence, by morphing from a Y6 configuration (as shown in Fig.…”

“…8) to a T6 configuration (not shown), we are able to shift the NP location rearwards to balance a possible tailheavy configuration following a parcel delivery. The details of the morphing concept, mechanism design and control approach are presented in [14]. In this paper, we demonstrate the conceptual design of the vehicle and consider the morphing mechanism as non-removable payload with = 2 kg in addition to the required payload = 6 kg.…”