Mission-Oriented Additive Manufacturing of Modular Mini-UAVs

Recent developments in fast additive manufacturing, such as rapid 3D printing of composite materials, present opportunities for the manufacturing of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that are tailor-made for the specific mission needs. This paper presents a novel framework for mission-oriented, modular design and construction of mini-UAVs using additive manufacturing. The outcome is a manufacturing method which is suitable for a parametric design that can be tailored for specific mission requirements, and rapidly constructed using additive manufacturing techniques. We show how additive manufacturing enables an agile design methodology by allowing fast and efficient iteration of prototypes during the design process. The proposed framework is demonstrated by the design of a tail-sitter hybrid VTOL vehicle, for which wing-tip geometry and wing dihedral angle were optimized over several iterations of rapid prototyping. Additionally, we present a flight performance validation of the resulting vehicle design through flight tests in a motion capture facility and outdoors. Finally we show several other vehicle configurations, such as quadrotors and a fixed-wing aircraft, that also take advantage of the proposed design and manufacturing methods.