DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF A LOW-COST, LONG-RANGE TRACTOR VTOL UAV FOR PAYLOAD DELIVERIES

Abstract

The quadplane is an amalgamation of a quadcopter/multi-copter and a fixed-wing airplane. It offers the flexibility of Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) provided by a quadcopter, and the range and performance offered by a fixed-wing aircraft. Quadplane characterization in literature is sparse due to its being the subject of few academic studies and yet its use as a payload delivery platform continues to proliferate since its introduction in the mid-2010s. This work documents and describes the design and development journey of a quadcopter system that was tested and put into service for logistics payload delivery. The list of requirements was developed between 2017-2020 and fine-tuned over extended seasons of mock-up prototyping, ground powerplant testing, and flight testing in operational conditions across South East Asia. The motivation for this work was the author’s journey through rural areas in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia where he witnessed logistics bottlenecks that hampered public health services in many rural areas. Drone logistics platforms offer the economies of unmanned systems while giving flexibility to logistics operators and offering a tool for public health policy that is unprecedented. The work that is done here serves to drive adoption by other drone operators developing low-cost systems for rural healthcare delivery.