I-Corps: Reconfigurable, modular, electric vertical take-off and landing unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform

Award ID: 2230589

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a modular unmanned air vehicle (UAV) system capable of being reconfigured to adapt to the requirements of diverse payload transportation missions and objectives. Vehicles with these capabilities have the potential to supplant various purpose-built, mission-specific vehicles for a reduced cost thanks to less complex operating procedures, reduced vehicle development and upgrade cycles, and economies of scale. More broadly, the proposed project extends the development of autonomous solutions currently tackled via human workers to the reduction of hazard exposure for humans with increased efficiency. A possible application of modular aerial vehicles is to lift various types of payloads to perform remote sensing or object manipulation at height, thus reducing the risk of falling for workers, which is the primary cause of fatal accidents in construction according to the census of fatal occupational injuries. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a modular, reconfigurable unmanned air vehicle (UAV). The proposed system consists of a collection of self-contained compatible rotorcraft modules that may be assembled in various configurations to fulfill diverse tasks. The research conducted for the development of this system involves three areas: the development of aerodynamic and structural models for modular vehicles, the design of control strategies for an arbitrary number of vehicles and novel configurations, and the implementation of efficient computer programs for the determination of optimal vehicle configurations given a task. Different module shapes have been studied and it was shown that three-dimensional, highly symmetric shapes inspired by the Platonic solids have the potential to yield versatile and structurally efficient vehicles. In addition, several methods for the efficient control of very large configurations have been developed with the goal of optimizing different criteria such as agility or power consumption. Such methods may be used in conjunction with the structural properties of modular vehicles to create computer programs capable of generating configurations with improved dynamic and structural properties given some task constraints. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Jaime A. Camelio