Aerodynamic interferences for the omnimorph aerial vehicle

Finished: 2024-02-23

MSc assignment

Fully actuated multirotor robots have been receiving more and more attention thanks to their capabilities to reject disturbance in any direction instantaneously and to exert any force in physical contact applications. The OmniMorph is an octorotor in which full actuation, and even more omnidirectionality, are obtained thanks to a single servo motor that can tilt all the propellers at once to trade off between omni-directionality and energy efficiency. 

The focus of this assignment lies in the exploration of the impact of the wrench execution of the physical platform compared with the simulations and the improvements that can be made to the wrench execution by taking aerodynamic interferences among propellers into account.

The relevant research questions for this assignment are as follows:

  • Is there a propeller mutual aerodynamic effect on the real platform that affects the propeller performance? If so, quantify it.
  • Which is then the optimal true value of the propeller tilting angle at hovering in terms of control input minimization when taking into account the decrease of propeller thrust coefficient for aerodynamic interferences?
  • Is there a design modification that would lead to an optimal value of alpha corresponding to a lower value of the control input at hovering compared to the optimal alpha of the current prototype?