Achieving Efficient Controlled Flight with A Single Actuator

In this paper, we present a nature-inspired Single Actuator Monocopter (SAM). It only has a single motor, a printed circuit board, and a 2D planform wing in contrast to existing monocopters which usually have two actuators and rather complex wing designs. By using Genetic Algorithm, wing and motor configuration parameters are optimized for the following goals: optimal motor configurations and minimal oscillations for passively stable hovering of the selected hardware. Although being a highly under-actuated system, SAM model is sufficiently robust to achieve controlled translations in 5DOF and designed to be passively stable even when controller is turned off. The prototype consumes an average of 25W in hover. By eliminating the high-speed flap servo, a significant amount of weight can be reduced and power is conserved. Proposed Square Cyclic Control Strategy was tested using the closed-loop PID control in an OptiTrack environment: SAM can demonstrate a stable figure-eight flight trajectory with minimal oscillation.