Analysis of flight of Quadcopter using

Smart Phones

Presented by:
Awais Raza (130336)
Nouman Saleem (150206)
Yasir Mehmood (150142)

Supervisior:
Dr. Sarah Saeed
 Contents
• Introduction
• Aim of project
• Deliverable
• Previous progress
• 8th semester progress
• Achievements
• Bills of material
• Conclusion
Abstract
The main aspiration of this project is to understand the flight of
quadcopter. It is an unmanned aerial vehicle which is lifted and propelled
by four rotors. This project will play a vital role for students at college
level to understand the concept of aerodynamics and construction of
multirotor helicopter. It will be controlled by android system which will
reduce the cost and complexity of quadcopter. The project will be greatly
beneficial for the entrepreneurship as all these things would contribute
towards a complete product which could also be carried in education
sector
Chapter 1: Introduction

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

A UAV, an abbreviation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, sometimes also

referred as Unpiloted Aerial Vehicle is a self-powered flying object with
no human pilot. These vehicles find their immense applications in several
fields, among them military and surveillance are of significant
importance. These vehicles are generally classified into two main
categories:
 Remotely Piloted Aircrafts
 Autonomous Aircrafts

In both categories, the common thing is that there is no human directly

involved or present in the flight environment. In the 1st one, the UAV is
controlled and guided through the way by humans through some sort of
wireless communication. However in the 2nd category the vehicle is made
intelligent enough to fly and perform the designated task by itself. Both
the cases however highlight the extreme feasibility of UAVs to be used in
applications where environment is not friendly to human life.

Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs)

Among UAVs, there exists a popular class called the Micro Aerial
Vehicles (MAVs). These are characterized by their small physical
dimensions making them highly portable and convenient to use even in
congested areas.
Multi-rotor UAVs
One basic division in UAV Classification is on the basis of their landing
and take-off abilities, i.e. ones with the Conventional Take-off and
Landing (CTOL) capability and the others with the Vertical Take-off and
Landing (VTOL) capability. Now a days, most of the commercially used
UAVs are of the VTOL category. This capability provides the aircraft to
land and take-off in places where conventional vehicles cannot. But
CTOL category UAVs are popular for their speed and high load carrying
capabilities.
However research and specific application demands make VTOL aircrafts
the ultimate choice. Among this class of UAVs, Multi-rotor UAVs are the
most popular ones because of their higher stability in flight and easy
control. Quadrotor is also a type of Multi-rotor VTOL type UAV. It is a
fixed pitch multi rotor air craft. The choice for fixed pitch rotors is
explained by the need of tedious aerodynamic design and control strategy
in case of UAVs such as Helicopters etc. that use variable pitch rotors.
Figure 1-1 shows a basic Quadrotor UAV.

Literature Review
The development of UAVs is a very vast and active research area in
Control Theory. One reason is its importance in practical applications
such as:
 Remote sensing
 Commercial aerial surveillance
 Commercial and motion picture filmmaking and Sports
 Oil, gas and mineral exploration and production
 Search and rescue
 Scientific research
 Armed attacks, etc.
Scope of the Thesis
The objective of the work in this thesis is to utilize the existing modeling
and estimation techniques, to design and implement a android system for
flight analysis of a Quadcopter. At the initial stages of this work, the goal
was set to design a simple quadcopter which operates with RF Transmitter
and receiver and develop the necessary electronics for its implementation..
This report provides an insight to the goals that have been achieved along
with shedding some light on the future prospects of the project as well.

Chapter 2: Mechanical Design

The mechanical design had been fabricated before. We inspected the

design at hand, looking for two things particularly; first, the design should
be aerodynamically efficient and second if the structure is taut enough to
resist vibrations, as it may cause the aircraft to fall down when at altitude.

Basic Design Requirements

The design of airframe entailed following requirements:
 Aerodynamic Structure
 Capability to lift the load of up to 1 kg
 Provide sufficient space for mounting electronics
 Sturdiness to withstand collision during flight

Quadrotor Dynamics

Figure 2-1 shows the design that was given for this project. The design
follows basic kinematics and utilizes four motors which can be used either
in cross configuration or plus configuration.
As shown in the figure, the two pairs of opposite rotors rotate in the
opposite direction which not only balances the torque but also removes
the need for another rotor for stabilization. The change in altitude is
brought by simultaneously increasing or decreasing the speeds of all the
motors. The yaw movement is produced by reducing the speed of one pair
of propellers in the same direction while increasing the speed of the other
pair of propellers; this allows an unbalanced torque to be produced on the
Quadrotor while keeping the downward thrust constant.

Configuration
On the basis of heading and flying configuration, Quadcopter platforms
are classified as Cross (x) category and Plus (+) category structures.
Figure 2-2 illustrates the difference among the two.

Because of easier control and more heading speed capabilities, the X

configuration is generally preferred as was done in our case.
Basic Requirements
The basic requirements that were identified for construction of Quadrotor
are:
 Light weight
 Strong and well balanced structure
 Easy-to-construct and easy-to-repair structure
 Provision of installing all the necessary accessories now and in future

Material Selection
The materials available for fabrication were Carbon fiber, Glass Fiber and
Aluminum. After taking into account the density, strength, cost and
availability in the market, Glass Fiber was chosen.
Rotor Blades / Propellers
Two types of rotor blades are used, rotating in clockwise and anti-
clockwise directions, which are essential for balancing the counter torque
imposed by the rotors on the Quadcopters. Choice of chosen blades
depended upon the thrust they produced in addition to their availability.

Chapter 3: Electronics
There are three main electronic units in our Quadcopter system. The
Microcontroller Unit (MCU) for the implementation of controller, the
Electronic Speed Controllers (ESCs) for the speed control of the brushless
DC motors finally the Ardu Pilot Module (APM) for providing the
orientation data for state estimation. The selection and functionality of
MCU and ESCs and their operation is described in this chapter, whereas
the ongoing study on IMU is also discussed