A Tiny Quadrotor Platform for Micro Sensor Testing and Control Design

Abstract

The smallest commercially available quadrotors to date are approximately 10 mg, which is several orders of magnitude larger than the smallest possible flying robots. This is not suitable to replicate behavior and constraints of lightweight flying insect robots, which are several orders of magnitude lighter than this. In this paper we present an approach to allow for the fabrication of small-scale quadrotors. We implement traditional carbon fiber layups, laser-based circuit etching, and origami robotics techniques in addition to a lightweight avionics system to allow for onboard computation and achieve stable hovering flight. We adjust previously utilized commercially available quadrotor schematics to suitably fit within our lightweight parameters, and utilize onboard power of a small lithium polymer battery. This allows for untethered flight, which has not been previously accomplished at this scale on a quadrotor platform. The quadrotor’s final mass is 2.71 grams and it demonstrates a possible thrust of approximately 3 grams. The development of this lightweight quadrotor platform will allow for future testing of lightweight sensors, power methods, and novel forms of control which are only possible onboard lightweight flying robots.