Should you need to design your own custom drone – and who doesn’t? – Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has a system for that.
Most commercial drones offer limited design options, usually with an even number of rotors and upward-facing propellers. New Federal Aviation Administration regulations have cleared more types of drones for flight than ever before, opening the door to do-it-yourself quadcopters and beyond.
“This system opens up new possibilities for how drones look and function,” says Wojciech Matusik, professor with CSAIL and head of the lab’s Computational Fabrication Group.
“It’s no longer a one-size-fits-all approach for people who want to make and use drones for particular purposes.”
Looking for a five-rotor pentacopter? No problem. Maybe you’d like a bunnycopter? Sure thing! Users can design drones by choosing from a database of parts and specifying their requiremetns for payload, cost, and battery usage, among other things. The system computes the size of design elements like rod lengths and motor angles, and looks at metrics like torque and thrust to determine whether or not the design will actually fly. The system can also optimize the custom drone’s flight plan.
The lab’s interface allows users to design drones with different propellers, rotors, and rods. Not only can you make these specifications, the lab provides a guarantee that the drones will take off, hover, and land, which is a big deal considering modifications have a great impact on a drone’s weight, shape, and control.
“For example, adding more rotors generally lets you carry more weight, but you also need to think about how to balance the drone to make sure it doesn’t tip,” says MIT PhD student Tao Du, the first author on a paper related to the system.
“Irregularly shaped drones are very difficult to stabilize, which means that they require establishing very complex control parameters.”
Putting together a custom drone requires in-depth knowledge of control systems, fabrication, and electronics.
“Developing multicopters like these that are actually flyable involves a lot of trial-and-error, tweaking the balance between all the propellers and rotors,” says Du. “It would be more or less impossible for an amateur user, especially one without any computer science background.”
