MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has developed a system that allows anyone to design their own drone. Users can change the size, shape, and structure of their drone based on the needs they have for payload, cost, flight time, battery usage, and other factors.
Users design drones by choosing from a database of parts and specifying their needs for things like payload, cost, and battery usage. The system computes the sizes of design elements like rod lengths and motor angles, and looks at metrics such as torque and thrust to determine whether the design will actually work. It also uses an “LQR controller” that takes information about a drone’s characteristics and surroundings to optimize its flight plan.
To demonstrate, researchers created a range of unusual-looking drones, including a five-rotor “pentacopter” and a rabbit-shaped “bunnycopter” with propellers of different sizes and rotors of different heights.
“This system opens up new possibilities for how drones look and function,” says MIT Professor Wojciech Matusik, who oversaw the project in CSAIL’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.”
Commercial drones only come in a small range of options, typically with an even number of rotors and upward-facing propellers. But there are many emerging use cases for other kinds of drones. For example, having an odd number of rotors might create a clearer view for a drone’s camera, or allow the drone to carry objects with unusual shapes.
Designing these less conventional drones, however, often requires expertise in multiple disciplines, including 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.”
The researchers hope to release their software soon with an open-source license.
