Abstract
This chapter presents a guideline to systematically design and construct an ultralight micro aerial quadrotor vehicle, capable of autonomous flight. The guideline details the steps to design a stable quadrotor with not more than 50 g takeoff weight while having a flight duration of 8 min. Optimization was done to all mechanical parts of the vehicle with the constraints of its weight and its performance. The guideline first covers the structural analysis of the micro quadrotor air frame, followed by its design in a 3D virtual simulator. Then, design of avionic system such as processor and sensors will be discussed, followed by controller implementation with the aid of software simulation. Components of the micro quadrotor are then fabricated and implemented based on the optimum results obtained from various simulations. Finally, the feasibility of the constructed aircraft is tested and confirmed with real flight missions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
M. Achtelik, A. Bachrach, R. He, S. Prentice, N. Roy, Autonomous navigation and exploration of a quadrotor helicopter in GPS-denied indoor environments, in IEEE ICRA, Kobe, 2009
M.I. Al-Qadi, A.M. Al-Bahi, Micro aerial vehicles design challenges: state of the art review, in SSAS UAV Scientific Meeting & Exhibition, Jeddah, 2006
S. Bouabdallah, A. Noth, R. Siegwart, PID vs LQR control techniques applied to an indoor micro quadrotor, in IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Sendai, 2004, pp. 2451–2456
G. Cai, B.M. Chen, T.H. Lee, Unmanned Rotorcraft Systems (Springer, London/New York, 2011)
A. Eresen, N. Imamoglu, M.O. Efe, Autonomous quadrotor flight with vision-based obstacle avoidance in virtual environment. Expert Syst. Appl. 39(1), 894–905 (2012)
B. Erginer, E. Altug, Modeling and PD control of a quadrotor VTOL vehicle, in IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, Istanbul, June 2007
R. Goel, S.M. Shah, N.K. Gupta, N. Ananthkrishnan, Modeling, simulation and flight testing of an autonomous quadrotor, in Proceedings of International Conference on Environmental and Agriculture Engineering, Bangalore, 2009
J.M. Grasmeyer, M.T. Keennon, Development of the black widow micro air vehicle. Prog. Astronaut. Aeronaut. 195, 519–35 (2011)
J.F. Guerrero-Castellanos, N. Marchand, A. Hably, S. Lesecq, J. Delamare, Bounded attitude control of rigid bodies: real-time experimentation to a quadrotor mini-helicopter. Control Eng. Pract. 19(8), 790–797 (2011)
J.S. Jang, D. Liccardo, Small UAV automation using MEMS. IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag. 22, 30–34 (2007)
T.S. Kim, K. Stol, V. Kecman, Control of 3 DOF quadrotor model, in Robot Motion and Control 2007, ed. by K. Kozlowski (Springer, London, 2007), pp. 29–38
I. Kroo, P. Kuns, Mesoscale flight and miniature rotorcraft development, in fixed and flapping wing aerodynamics for micro air vehicle applications, of progress in astronautics and aeronautics, 195, pp. 503–517 (2001)
C. Lanczos, An iteration method for the solution of the eigenvalue problem linear differential and integral operators. J. Res. Natl. Bur. Stand. 45, 255–282 (1950)
L. Meier, P. Tanskanen, F. Fraundorfer, M. Pollefeys, PIXHAWK: a system for autonomous flight using onboard computer vision, in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Shanghai, 2011
D. Mellinger, M. Shomin, V. Kumar, Control of quadrotors for robust perching and landing, in International Powered Lift Conference, Philadelphia, Oct 2010
D. Mellinger, M. Nathan, V. Kumar, Trajectory generation and control for precise aggressive maneuvers with quadrotors. Int. J. Robot. Res. 31(5), 664–674 (2012)
R.C. Michelson, Overview of micro air vehicle system design and integration issues, in Encyclopedia of Aerospace Engineering, ed. by R. Blockley, W. Shyy (Wiley, Chichester/Hoboken, 2010)
R. Naldi, L. Gentili, L. Marconi, A. Sala, Design and experimental validation of a nonlinear control law for a ducted-fan miniature aerial vehicle. Control engineering practice, Special issue on aerial robotics, 18(7), pp. 747–760 (2010)
L. Petricca, P. Ohlckers, C. Grinde, Micro- and nano-air vehicles: state of the art. Int. J. Aerosp. Eng. 2011, 1–17 (2011)
S.K. Phang, J.J. Ong, R. Yeo, B.M. Chen, T.H. Lee, Autonomous mini-UAV for indoor flight with embedded on-board vision processing as navigation system, in IEEE Region 8 International Conference on Computational Technologies in Electrical and Electronics Engineering (SIBIRCON), Irkutsk Listvyanka, 2010
S.K. Phang, C. Cai, B.M. Chen, T.H. Lee, Design and mathematical modeling of a 4-standard-propeller (4SP) quadrotor, in World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation, Beijing, 2012
P. Pounds, R. Mahony, J. Gresham, P. Corke, J. Roberts, Towards dynamically-favourable quadrotor aerial robots, in Proceedings of the Australian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Canberra, 2004
P. Pounds, R. Mahony, P. Corke, Modelling and control of a quad-rotor robot, in Proceedings Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation 2006, Auckland, 2006
F. Wang, S.K. Phang, J. Cui, B.M. Chen, T.H. Lee, Search and rescue: a UAV aiding approach, in Canadian Congress of Applied Mechanics, Vancouver, June 2011
F. Wang, S.K. Phang, J. Cui, G. Cai, B.M. Chen, T.H. Lee, Nonlinear modeling of a miniature fixed-pitch coaxial UAV, in American Control Conference, Montreal, 27–29 June 2012
R.J. Wood, Design, fabrication and analysis of a 3DOF, 3 cm flapping-wing MAV, in Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, San Diego, 29 Oct-2 Nov 2007
B. Yun, K. Peng, B.M. Chen, Enhancement of GPS signals for automatic control of a UAV helicopter system, in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation, Guangzhou, 2007, pp. 1185–1189
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Phang, S.K., Li, K., Chen, B.M., Lee, T.H. (2015). Systematic Design Methodology and Construction of Micro Aerial Quadrotor Vehicles. In: Valavanis, K., Vachtsevanos, G. (eds) Handbook of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9707-1_116
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9707-1_116
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-9706-4
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-9707-1
eBook Packages: EngineeringReference Module Computer Science and Engineering