Weeks 8, 9, and 10

Sorry for the lack of updates, I was preparing for the VEX Worlds Championship, which took up a lot of my time.

I did, however, finish all my testing and analysis. For my last modification, I decided to do something that would completely destroy my quadcopter, because, why the heck not.

I wanted to create a more aerodynamic body for the quad, so I melted through the center of all four of the arms.

This meant that the air would not push down on the body, but instead pass throughout.

Unfortunately, the heat somewhat disfigured the arm and the quad became a lot more unstable, it doesn't event fly up straight anymore. However, I did all my testing, and got the result of 1.198 seconds for the time it took, a trial is down below. I believe the reason it had the opposite effect is because some of the energy was used in the horizontal motion instead of the vertical.

Weeks 5,6, and 7

Well, the last three weeks have been quite hectic. My work in MATLAB began somewhat well, but I don't think I was able to obtain value from my simulation attempts. I tried to study from pre existing simulators and create my own but it did not end up well.

Above are two screenshots from my quadcopter simulator. As you can see, there are many issues ranging from the UI to the actual model, even the math is not quite right. I finally decided that the time I would need to invest in figuring out how to make my simulator effective was not worth it, as I could get more valuable data from real life testing. However, I do believe that simulation could be very helpful in this particular project, and is something that I would choose to pursue further if time permitted.


As seen in my last blog, this week's work involves tipping the propellors. Many airplanes have tipped propellors, however, many drones do not.

The purpose of a tipped wing is quite simple. It increases efficiency. It has a similar effect to what is commonly known as a ducted propellor, which are used in airplane turbines.

Above is a diagram of the airflow around a ducted propellor. A tipped wing follows a very similar principle.

I took the cut propellors from my earlier experiment, and bent them so that a centimeter was pointed up. I then ran 20 trials, one is included below.

The result ended up being 1.152 seconds, which supports my hypothesis.