SAMURAI

Multicopter drones, a category of uncrewed aerial vehicles, are expected to play a key role in the future industry, taking over tasks like transportation of small goods, aerial surveying, and photographic mapping. These applications imply the presence of drones over inhabited areas and therefore necessitate a safe operation, which has up-to-date been widely overlooked. This proposal will develop a multicopter platform that is designed with a safety focus throughout the hardware and software and which will provide reusable components that enable a faster certification process in the future. The key novelties are smart electronic speed controllers (ESC), a highly efficient powertrain, and a flight-controller with an integrated robust state estimation.

The ESCs receive and process live data like the rotation speed and possible indications for a motor failure from dedicated sensors. The high-power systems will be based on GaN technology, which boosts efficiency over current systems and allows for significant weight drop due to reduced cooling requirements. Finally, the state estimation model is based on equivariant observer theory, rather than extended Kalman filters, which allows both, a simpler and more robust feedback for the flight-controller software. All these components will be integrated and tested using flight-worthy drones in Y-configuration with payloads of 1.5 and 5.5 kg and a maximum take-off mass of up to 25 kg. The proposed design includes redundancies for all critical components as well as a concept of how to leverage these redundancies in case of failure