Design, Development, and Flight Testing of a 70-gram Micro Quad-Cyclocopter

This paper discusses the development of a micro-scale quad-cyclocopter for the purpose of investigating cyclorotor application to low Reynolds number flight. The 70-gram vehicle was the lightest quad-cyclocopter developed to date by an order of magnitude and only the second to achieve forward flight. It utilized two counter-rotating pairs of cyclorotors operating at ?18,600 Re to generate thrust and balance the reaction torque. Each cyclorotor had two control parameters, thrust direction and magnitude, giving the quad-cyclocopter eight independent control parameters. Flight tests were conducted to demonstrate several unique maneuvers the over-actuated system was capable of: changing pitch attitude in a point hover and forward translation via thrust vectoring. Data was collected on longitudinal maneuvers to compare forward flight performance when using strictly thrust vectoring for propulsion versus forward flight achieved by pitching without thrust vectoring. Similar performance was observed between the two modes indicating that they could be used independently or combined based on the desired vehicle state.