Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

An Integrated Platform To Increase The Range/Endurance Of Unmanned Helicopters, Roy Godzdanker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Class I (kg) autonomous helicopters are becoming increasingly popular for a wide range of non-military applications such as, surveillance, reconnaissance, traffic monitoring, emergency response, agricultural spraying, and many other "eye in the sky" missions. However, an efficient landing/takeoff platform with refueling/recharging capabilities has not yet been developed to increase the endurance and decrease the cost for Class I helicopters.

This dissertation presents a three-prong approach for increasing the range and endurance of Class I autonomous helicopters, which will then spur demand by non-military organizations wanting to take advantage of such capabilities and, therefore, drop their price. The proposed Intelligent Self-Leveling …