A Novel Micro Aerial Vehicle Design: The Evolution of the Omnicopter MAV

This paper presents an evolution on the configuration of a novel micro aerial vehicle (MAV) design, the Omnicopter MAV. The first generation Omnicopter prototype has an actuation system with eight degrees of freedom (DOFs) consisting of 5 brushless direct current (BLDC) motors and 3 servo motors. It is composed of a carbon fiber rod built airframe, 2 central counter-rotating coaxial propellers for thrust and yaw control, and 3 perimeter-mounted electric ducted fans (EDFs) with servo motors performing thrust vectoring. During the development of the second generation prototype, we simplified and 3D printed the frame to increase stiffness, robustness and manufacturability, and reduced the actuation DOFs from 8 to 7 by removing the top propeller and using just the bottom one for yaw control to improve performance. Flight controller and control allocator designs and test flight results for this new configuration are presented in this paper.