Kite VTOL Maintenance-Friendly Drone
Low-cost VTOL with additive manufacturing and controls-focused design
Overview
I designed and built the Kite VTOL with a focus on using mechanical simpliciy and affordability. The design uses 3D printed plastic for nealy all parts, including the wings, with just a few carbon fiber spars. It was a tilt-rotor design that used the front rotors for fixed-wing flight controls to eliminate the need to control services on the wings.
I built several prototypes and flew them to validate the design. I found that the very low pitch stability was difficult to control because of the overly strong pirch control that the tilt-rotors provided. While I did get it to fly with a temporary horizontal stabilizer, I never got it tuned enough to fly in it's inteneded configuration before I ran out of time to focus on the project.
I think the idea could work, but special attention would need to be paid to the actuator design to ensure very fine control while in forward flight, and someone with more control experience would need to tune it.
Me next the Kite VTOL during a test flight.
Early prototype.
Demonstration of how small the Kite VTOL could get.
Temporary horizontal stabilizer during flight testing.
Added temporary vertical stabilizer while I was attempting to tune the flight controller.
Pogo pins connector built into the boom mount for easy and quick assembly.
Accomplishments
- ✓Designed and built lightweight, repair-friendly components, minimizing dependency on costly molds.
- ✓Integrated a unique control philosophy into the PX4 code base.
- ✓Got it to transition and fly with the temporary horizontal stabilizer.
Lessons Learned
- •Cheap servos have poor fine control
- •3D printed aircraft can work well