Construction of an autonomous hybrid drone

Subject description:

Convertible aircraft have nowadays two challenges: proposing robust controllers and platform design. In the last few years several convertible aircraft prototypes have emerged. There is a discussion out there about which is the best possible convertible aircraft configuration. Among them the most popular are tilt-rotors, tail-sitters and tilt-wing.

In this thesis we propose to construct a prototype consisting of 5 rotors, 4 of them oriented as a conventional quadrotor and one of them oriented for providing horizontal thrust. The transition maneuver is achieved by means of an intelligent system responsible to turn on and off the 5 rotors depending on system states and aerodynamics.

The abilities that the student will learn during this thesis are:

  • Nonlinear control
  • Robotics
  • Coding
  • ROS
  • Git
  • MATLAB
  • System modeling
  • Pilot planes and multirotors
  • CAD modeling
  • Construction of prototypes

The thesis is developed in collaborations with PhD, master and undergraduate students who are Lapyr LAB members.


Objectives:

  • Collaboration with Prof. Gerardo Flores and student Alejandro Flores to propose a robust controller for the transition maneuver in the 6 degrees of freedom of a convertible aircraft.
  • Design and construction of the convertible prototype
  • Publish a paper in a prestigious international conference such as: ICRA, IROS, ACC, CDC, ICUAS.
  • Attending the conference.
  • A draft for an International Journal.
  • The thesis


State of the project

Project started in 2016.


Students involved in the project:

Alejandro Flores


Publications from the team in 2018:

  • A Simple Controller for the Transition Maneuver of a Tail-Sitter Drone. Flores, Alejandro; Montes de Oca Rebolledo, AndrĂ©s; and Flores, Gerardo. 2018 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC) Dec. 17-19, 2018, Fontainebleau, Miami Beach, FL, USA (BEST CONFERENCE IN THE WORLD OF CONTROL).
  • Master thesis at CIO from Alejandro Flores
  • Others publications in review.


Materials:

Fixed-wing aircraft; quadrotor drones; autopilots; altitude sensor; GPS; inertial navigation system; monocular camera; RTK precision GPS. All materials are available at the LAB.


Financial support:

FORDECYT project under grant 000000000292399.