ARMAGEDDRONE

Armageddrone is our flagship project. The drone is designed exploiting the tilt-rotor technology. This allows to move in level flight in any direction without necessarily having to make an attitude change.

Unlike conventional drones Armageddrone can rotate the carbon supports connecting the brushless motors to the main body, allowing rapid movements without any attitude changes.

advantages

This technology offers multiple advantages over conventional drones. An example is the possibility of limiting the use of heavy and expensive instrumentation such as gimbals (used to stabilize the on-board camera every time there is an attitude variation). In the case of Armageddrone, it would be possible to obtain the same result, i.e. perfectly stabilized images, without having to use a mechanical stabilizer.

Thinking about the possible implications that this technology could have, it is impossible not to mention the transport sector.

A conventional drone by its nature needs to make an attitude vaiation every time it is required perform a translational motion. Inevitably any payload attached to the aircraft would sufferthe same variaton.  In certain situations, however, it is essential that the payload remains stable and not subject to sudden changes in inclination. An example is the transport of liquid or granular material. The sloshing of a liquid could lead to the instability of the drone inevitably compromising the mission.

Implications can also be found in the medical sector. The main application of the proposed technology would surely be the transport of organs and blood. This device is designed to move quickly without stressing the payload. Armageddrone also possesses, by its nature, a degree of reliability superior to that of common quadricopters. The loss of a single motor would not in fact lead to the loss of the entire drone. Moreover, theoretically speaking, the failure of two opposing motors should not pose a risk to the success of the mission.

the architecture

Armageddrone works thanks to the tilt-rotor technology. Four servomotors placed at the end of each arm allow the brushless motors to rotate independently. This design allows to compensate the change of attitude introduced during the motion.

 

the hardware

Armageddrone’s main body is 3D printed using PLA filaments reinforced with carbon fibers. 3D printing makes it possible to obtain complex shapes that would have been impossible to obtain with conventional machining.

The non-self-produced components are exclusively the motors, the carbon arms, the bearings and the propellers. The rest of the drone is completely self-made. The PCB (Printed Circuit Board) is instead designed by BEMA but manufactured by an external company specialized in this field.

 

Our self designed PCB

the software

The flight software is the real challenge of this project. It is in fact extremely complex to develop a control algorithm for a drone of this type. BEMA’s challenge is to achieve perfect integration between software and hardware in order to allow Armageddrone to make its first flight.