Design and development of high performance multirotor UAVs

• Main Author: Lee, Shaun Wei Jie
• Other Authors: Xie Lihua
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/67958
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs in short, have been gaining massive attention around the world for the past few years and its industry has been moving very fast ever since. It has attracted attention all over the world from hobbyists, to the military, and is not likely to stagnate any time soon. The possibilities of these UAVs are endless, from delivering parcels and food to using drones (another term for UAVs) to race against each other, a race called First Person View (FPV) racing, these UAVs range from different shapes and sizes and have been tested and used for many different applications. There are many different configurations for a UAV such as the quadcopter and the tricopter. This report focuses on the quadcopter because of its simplicity over the other configurations and its popularity over the years. This report documents mainly the hardware selection of the components of the quadcopter and the construction process of the different types of multirotors. Each of these components will be presented in theory and how they affect the actual flight of the quadcopter. The equations of how the components affect the flight have been researched on thoroughly and been used during the testing of motor and propeller combinations for the experimentations. These findings will be used to compare against the results of the actual calculations and the efficiency of the calculated findings. Thereafter, the sizing equations of the ESC, frame and battery will also be formulated for multirotor frame design and component selection based on data and statistics. These data will be collected from manufacturer specifications and test data. This is for the purpose of quick systematic design of an efficient multirotor based on required endurance and payload.