ASME Drone
The quadcopter was built to compete in ASME’s annual Innovative Additive Manufacturing 3D Competition. The objective of the competition was to design and manufacture a drone using additive manufacturing and an iterative design process. The drone had to pick up a payload, fly through an obstacle course, deliver the payload, and repeat the process five times in the least amount of time possible. The body of the drone, arms, mounts for the electro-magnet, and mount for the camera were all designed and 3D printed by the team. The 3D printed parts were produced on personal 3D printers owned by members of the team - including my personal 3D printer.
Drone Body
Designed by our team and printed on my personal printer
Integrating all Systems
My role for the project was integrating all the systems together. My first task was to solder all the components together. This step took a lot of research since the flight controller was a 20x20mm board with very little silkscreening and little documentation supplied by the manufacturer. After this, I began connecting all the systems to the flight controller and teaching other members of the team how to solder.
Betaflight Programming
After wiring all the systems, I had to get them communicating properly with each other. I used Betaflight Configurator for this task. Programming of the flight controller involved the following:
Ensuring that the receiver was operating on the same frequency and mode as the transmitter
Setting pins that each motor was connected to
Configuring the positions of each motor relative to the flight controller
Configuring acceleration and deceleration gain values
Setting the pin for the FPV camera
Configuring the transmit frequency and mode of the FPV camera
First Successful Test of all Motors and Transmitter
All four motors were connected directly to one electronic speed controller (ESC) each. The ESCs were then connected to the flight controller and power was supplied using a 4S LiPo battery. The motors were attached to their 3D-printed arms and clamped down to the workbench for testing.
The radio transmitter was used to control the motors during the test. This was the first validation of the transmitter and receiver functioning properly and communicating properly with the flight controller.
First Successful Flight
Below is a video of the first successful flight of the drone with myself piloting.
