Design and development of atypical multicopters with application to autonomous flying

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the form of quadcopters have been gaining the spotlight these past years, from hobbyist to the military. This project seeks to understand the dynamics and control of multirotors to aid in the development of heptacopter. The report starts off by examining the multirotor’s structure and physics, followed by its components, a generic mathematic model of multirotor flight dynamics and its control theory Subsequently, the report touches on the software of Pixhawk, a flight controller of choice, and its usage, before describing on multirotors the project group has built. On completion of the project, three multicopters (a quadcopter, tricopter and heptacopter) were built and demonstrated stable flight.