Senior Capstone Design Project

Alexander Baikovitz
Nabarun Banerjee
Andrew Rosenfeld
Jeffrey Woodford
Jeffrey Zhang

Problem Description Concept Description:

Drones are limited in many applications due to low battery life. This project covered the development of a
drone landing platform that captures a drone and swaps the old battery with a new one. This
landing platform can be standalone or fit onto another system to improve mobility. This project can
significantly change how drones are used in industry.

Customer Needs and Specs:

• Capture and secure a landed drone within 6’’ of landing error Figure 4: Battery Remover Figure 5: Battery Elevator Figure 6: Battery Interface
• Remove and replace multiple batteries autonomously, under 2 minutes per swap Clears Used Battery Stores and Replaces Batteries Mates Battery to Drone
• Secure attachment and connection of a swapped battery to drone during flying

Figure 7: Passive Constraint Figure 8: Active Constraint

Passively Slides Drone Into Place Fixes Drone to Platform
(a) (b) (c)
Analysis:
Figure 1: (a) Customer Needs and (b), (c) Robot the Landing Platform will be Mounted to FEA simulation was done on both the drone and the landing

Concept Generation and Selection: platform to validate the designs. For the analysis on the
drone shown in Figure 9, the main worry was that the
The final design was arrived at through an iterative process shown in Figure 2. First, concepts were connectors used in that design required too much force, so
generated with rough sketches. All the concepts were combined and scored to determine the best solution. the battery could not mount due to the deflection. The FEA
The designs were then drafted in CAD, manufactured, and tested. Any shortcomings were identified and simulation found that the end of the overhang would deflect
Figure 9: FEA of Drone Top Plate
the concept was modified if it did not perform satisfactory. up to 0.5" under normal loading while swapping, so a new
design was developed that did not apply a significant force
Some of the key ideas and considerations that were taken into account in the concept generation and to the drone while swapping the battery.
selection process are as follows:
• The ability to store as many batteries as possible to increase the capabilities of the drone In the second prototype, the framing was removed from the
• Fit into as small a form factor as possible to ensure it fits the design constraints landing to mount the platform directly to the vehicle.
• Reliably remove and replace batteries. If the system fails while replacing a battery, then the drone However, this significantly reduced the rigidity. In the
(a) (b)
could crash or batteries could not be replaced, effectively ending the mission. simulation shown in Figure 10, adding T-Beams to the
• A modular design to aide in parallel work as well as ensuring easy assembly and maintenance frame resulted in a decrease of deflection from 0.5" to 0.25“. Figure 10: FEA of Landing Platform (a) without
reinforcement and (b) with reinforcement.
Testing:
In Figure 11, testing was conducted on the method to
actively constrain the drone. It was found that using the
electropermanent magnet was too variable in its holding
force, ranging from 50 to 150 N. To solve the issue, the
electropermanent magnet was replaced with a beetlelock
mechanism. Figure 11: Constraint Testing
Figure 2: Iterative Concept Generation Process

Battery Remover
Battery Elevator
(a)
Figure 3: Final Prototype Design With Key Features Identified (a) CAD Render (b) Manufactured
Drone Constraint Battery Remover Drone Constraint To how well the drone could slide into place, two tests
were conducted. The first test involved holding the drone
over the platform in certain positions and then dropping it
to see if it correctly slides into place. The second test
involved taking off the drone and then landing it. These
tests verified that the drone can land within 6" of the target
properly.
Figure 12: Drone Landing Testing
Conclusions:
Overall, the prototype meets all customer needs except for the most critical one, reliability. Batteries
can be swapped, however, the mass of the battery is too much for the payload release mechanisms
used to hold the battery in the interface. Because the releases are plastic and only constrained at one
Battery Interface end, the deflection caused by the battery causes alignment issues while mounting. If this were a
Battery Interface Battery Elevator
product, custom release mechanisms that have increased rigidity would be created and more design
(b)
focusing on enclosing the system, making a better frame, better wire routing, and making it a
standalone unit would be conducted. Despite these issues, the prototype still beats other similar
System products in the field in terms of form factor, time to swap batteries, and in how mobile the platform is.