Towards dynamically-favourable quad-rotor aerial robots

This paper outlines progress towards realising practical quad-rotor robot helicopters and, in particular, the Australian National University’s ‘X-4 Flyer’ platform. Two challenges facing the X-4 are generating sufficient thrust and managing unstable dynamic behaviour. We address these issues with a rotor design technique for maximising thrust and the application of a novel rotor mast configuration. An aero-elastic blade design is described and its performance results are presented. A sprung teetering rotor hub that allows adjustment of the blade flapping characteristics and a quad-rotor dynamic model with blade flapping are introduced. The use of inverted rotors is shown to produce favorable stability properties for the Mark II X-4 Flyer.