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Voxelcopter Modular Autonomous Aerial Systems Sophia Wang, Miana Smith, Neil Gershenfeld
A mass-efficient approach to unmanned aerial system (UAS) design and construction is achieved through the discrete assembly of lattice materials. For a UAS application, the design of small unmanned aerial vehicles in which discrete components can be integrated with parametrically scaled and printed components enables mission-driven sizing, design, and synthesis

Abstract

Different UAS applications, such as military reconnaissance, environmental monitoring, or commercial delivery, require different specifications such as payload weight and travel range, which typically require completely different designs. This means that it is difficult, if not impossible, to easily reconfigure an existing UAS for a new application without the redesign and reconstruction of the system. To facilitate easy reconfiguration of UAS, we present Voxelcopter, a modular construction kit for the rapid-prototyping and rapid assembly of multicopter UAS. We de- velop basic viable components for flight, including reconfigurable building blocks, termed functional voxels, that assemble into high stiffness, lightweight structures with integrated power and data, a custom flight controller software library, propellers, and power storage. In this demo, a quadcopter is assembled, and we flight test the resulting vehicle, then disassemble it into components ready for reuse, demonstrating the easy reconfigurability of the system.