Abstract
As small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS)/drone technology becomes widely ado pted in various industries, it is increasingly deployed in indoor environment. However conventional multicopter sUAS has several downsides when deployed indoor, such as high safety risks and low flight endurance, which necessitates safety precautions and changes to existing workflow. There is a need for a new type of sUAS design that is safe to operate indoor and in close proximity around humans. This thesis presents the Spherical Indoor Coand ?a Effect Drone (SpICED), a safe spherical blimp sUAS design propelled by closed impellers utilizing the Coand ?a ef fect. Unlike multicopter or conventional propeller blimp, the closed impellers reduce safety risks to surrounding people and objects, allowing SpICED to be operated in close proximity with humans and opening up possibility of novel human-drone interactions. It has the potential to enable a persistent, integrated indoor sUAS which is always on standby, and capable of working alongside human workers. Capitalizing on Coand ?a effect, the design implemented a closed-impeller rotor with uni-directional or bi-directional torque control in the propulsion unit. Different config urations of the arrangement and quantity of propulsion units were explored, with the iii strengths and weaknesses of such configurations evaluated through dynamical analy sis and simulations in 6 degree of freedom (DoF) space. Based on the simulation result, two propulsion system configurations were selected for further investigations. Due to the unique dynamics of the propulsion system, PID controllers, combined with custom control mixing algorithm were developed to achieve position and attitude control in all three axes. Two physical prototypes with the selected propulsion unit configurations were then constructed to experimentally validate the dynamic behavior and controls in a motion-captured environment