ETH Zurich's Tiltrotor Micro Vehicle Offers Efficient Omnidirectional Flight

Omnidirectional air vehicles are capable of maneuvering and hovering in any direction and orientation, making it look seemingly impossible for an aircraft to exhibit that type of capability, and yet they can. That said, most omnidirectional drones either focus on producing high capabilities in flight parameters or high hover efficiency; however, a system that combines the two hasn't been developed until recently with ETH Zurich's tiltrotor micro vehicle.

Engineers from autonomous systems researchers at ETH Zurich designed the efficient drone using 12 coaxial rotors, with two positioned on its six arms, that can twist and turn during flight without jumbling any wires. Each arm is capable of rotating 360° using a pair of KDE 2315XF-885 motors per arm, which are independently tilted by a Dynamixel XL430 servo actuator located at the base of the drone to reduce system inertia that would generally make the drone unstable.

The upper and lower propellers on each arm counter-rotate, thus canceling out drag torques and minimizing the gyroscopic moment on the drones' tilting mechanism, which reduces the effort it takes to tilt the rotors. The tiltrotor micro vehicle is controlled via a Pixhawk flight controller, driven by an Intel NUC I7 mini PC, and powered by two 3800mAh 6S LiPo batteries. The engineers state the "vehicle has a total system mass is 4.27 kg, and it can generate over 130 N of force at maximum thrust in the horizontal hover configuration."

On the applications end, the drone could house equipment such as cameras and other instruments inside its housing rather than hanging them from an external gimble. It can also fly sideways, allowing it to travel through narrow spaces for applications such as on-site inspections or search and rescue. It will be interesting to see what the efficient system will be capable of in future revisions.