Effect of Polytetrafluoroethylene Material on Dynamic Behaviour of an Underactuated Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft capable of flight without a human operator. This aircraft can be controlled remotely or autonomously via a preprogrammed flight path. A quadrotor UAV is one of the best unmanned aerial vehicles. It is an aircraft whose lift is generated by four DC motors and it is able to take off and land vertically. It also has the advantage that it can be controlled by varying the speeds of the four motors in a systematic manner. In this paper, we present the design, development, testing and implementation of a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle. The primary goal of the research was to find a way of reducing the effect of the vibrations generated by the rotors in order to ensure that those vibrations are not transmitted to the electronic hardware. For this purpose, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) was chosen for designing the hub and motor’s mount. PTFE is composed of carbon and fluorine and is suitable for absorbing the vibration generated by the rotors. A complete simulation was developed and used to tune a proportional controller in MATLAB. This controller was then implemented in hardware using a PIC 16F876 microcontroller. Experimental results show the effectiveness of this material in reducing the effects of the motor’s vibrations, and thus improving the measurement quality of the inertial measurement unit (IMU). Keywords-Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, Quadrotor, PIC16F876 Microcontroller, Polytetrafluoroethylene, Inertial Measurement Unit.