Construction of a quadrotor platform and an investigation of inertial navigation

Abstract: The usage and potential usage of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in our society grows rapidly and therefore an interest of how to design such a craft was sparked. The ability of an autonomous flight is valuable in many applications and requires that the craft is equipped with a GPS-module. If the connection is lost the UAV’s itinerary may differ from the predetermined one. Because of this an alternative navigation technique would be interesting. By measuring the inertia of an object it is possible to derive the location in relation to the starting point. In this thesis report a comprehensive description of how a quadrotor helicopter is designed and constructed will be given. Furthermore, inertial navigation implemented by miniaturized mechanical and electro-mechanical elements will also be treated in this report.