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

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是开发一种模块化无人驾驶航空器（UAV）系统，该系统能够重新配置以适应各种有效载荷运输任务和目标的要求。具有这些能力的车辆有可能取代各种专门制造的特派团专用车辆，因为操作程序不那么复杂，车辆开发和升级周期减少，而且规模经济，因此成本降低。更广泛地说，拟议的项目扩展了目前通过人类工人解决的自主解决方案的开发，以提高效率，减少人类的危险暴露。模块化飞行器的一个可能的应用是提升各种类型的有效载荷，以执行高空遥感或物体操纵，从而降低工人的坠落风险，这是致命职业伤害普查中建筑致命事故的主要原因。I-Corps项目基于开发模块化，可重新配置的无人机（UAV）。所提出的系统由一系列独立的兼容旋翼机模块组成，这些模块可以组装成各种配置以完成各种任务。为开发该系统进行的研究涉及三个领域：模块化车辆的空气动力学和结构模型的开发，任意数量的车辆和新配置的控制策略的设计，以及执行有效的计算机程序，用于确定给定任务的最佳车辆配置。不同的模块形状已被研究，它表明，三维的，高度对称的形状灵感来自柏拉图固体有潜力产生多功能和结构高效的车辆。 此外，已经开发了几种用于非常大的配置的有效控制的方法，其目标是优化不同的标准，例如敏捷性或功耗。这种方法可以与模块化飞行器的结构特性结合使用，以创建能够产生具有改进的动态和结构特性的配置的计算机程序，给出一些任务约束。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

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.