Universal Flying Objects (UFOs): Modular Multicopter System for Flight of Arbitrary Objects

With foreseeable applications such as assisted agriculture, reconnaissance operations,and transportation, research in small, human-friendly micro aerial vehicles hasincreasingly received attention from scientists and engineers. These small robots,nicknamed drones, have potential to revolutionise our use of robots for civilian applications.However, to date, their uses are still limited to a few certain professionaltasks such as cinematography and agriculture (crop monitoring). We believe theinflexibility of the existing platform, which prevents a single vehicle to excel in multipletasks (as opposed to a widespread smart devices such as smartphones andlaptops which are highly multi-functional), impedes the expansion of the technology.In this proposed research, we aim to introduce an alternative modular designof the vehicle that is able to universally adapt to perform different functions. Thisis achieved by decoupling the hardware into the thrust generating part and thefunctional part: the thrust generating part consists of propelling modules for performingflight-related activities, and the functional part is any object or tool selectedfor current application. The propelling modules are affixed to the object, providingit a flight functionality, or in other words, creating a flight of an arbitrary object.The concept allows the transformation of one vehicle to serve different purposes ina versatile fashion.Among existing aerial robot platforms, multi-rotor vehicles have thrived andwell researched owing to their manoeuvrability and simple mechanical design. Thisproposed research aims to leverage these results and address the aforementionedshortcoming of current multi-rotor vehicles. This will take place in three tasks. Thefirst task is to design a modular multi-rotor platform for attachment to an arbitraryobject. The design allows addition and removal of propelling modules dependingon the payload required for the immediate application. Second, the correspondingflight control algorithms will be developed to ensure flight stability of the vehiclewhen the flight modules and object are arranged in almost any configuration thatare not known in advance. This is distinct from a conventional approach where thevehicular dynamics are pre-identified with known geometry, mass distribution, andthe centre of mass position. The third task involves the investigation of effects ofcomplaint object on flight stability, alternative vehicle design and control approach.This proposed research will contribute to advances in the field of engineering and,in particular, micro aerial vehicles by offering an alternative platform design. It islikely that the proposed approach would transform how aerial robots, or, in this case,flying objects, are integrated into our daily lives. Scientific merits will come from:(i) the implementation of modular robot concept in aerial robots; (ii) developmentof robust self-calibrating, adaptive flight control algorithms for a highly-configurablemulti-rotor system; (iii) better understanding of compliant effects on flight dynamicsand stability of multi-rotor systems.