Effects of flight configurations on the performance of nano-quadrotors in hover
Anoop Kiran, Kenneth Breuer · 2023
The growth of quadrotors due to their low cost, agility, and precise maneuvering has made them applicable across a variety of fields. For search and rescue applications that require immediate response and coordination between agents, the cooperation of multiple quadrotors for task fulfilment is inevitable. At the nano-quadrotor scale, flight boundaries [1] and environmental effects can render the vehicle unstable. This effect is amplified for quadrotors flying in proximity flight, where instability can trigger the functionality, and affect the performance of adjacent quadrotors conducting designated tasks. Destabilizing could affect the structural integrity of the flying quadrotor as well as pose a threat to the safety of any humans or surrounding quadrotors in a multi-robot setting. For energy-efficient flight, it has been proven from the V-shaped formation in flocking birds that the wingtip vortices can be advantageous for lift generation for the trailing birds in this formation [2]. Juxtaposing formation flight, numerical simulations of multiple Crazyflies (nano-quadrotors) flying in realistic conditions are analyzed under varying configurations in this formation to uncover lift variations and power requirements. This serves as the groundwork for future work on the scalability of aerial robotic swarms and performance efficiency in optimal configurations while flying in adverse environmental conditions.