Resizable drone designs: For maneuvering through paths of varying dimensions

Abstract

An unmanned aerial vehicle, commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard. Essentially, a drone is a flying robot that can be remotely controlled or fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems, Flying robots are increasingly adopted in search and rescue missions because of their capability to quickly collect and stream information from remote and dangerous areas. Their maneuverability and hovering capabilities allow them to navigate through complex structures, inspect damaged buildings, and even explore underground tunnels and caves. Since their size is fixed, maneuvering over the compact areas and tunnels of variable size becomes an issue. To overcome this issue, we propose a model of quadrotor design which has the capability to change its size. The arm length of the quadrotor is changed dynamically so that it can fly in areas of variable sizes that would be hard to reach with the quadrotor of fixed arm length. On the other hand, our model is cost-effective, since the arm of the drone is designed with PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride). Using this model, drones will be able to move over compact areas and passages of variable sizes, thus aiding in better exploration during search and rescue operations.