RC Helicopter
The purpose of the MEAM Machine project is to build an integrated device across three groups to form an enterprise. From the start of this project, we knew that we wanted to build an RC helicopter, but doing it in less than a month would be quite the challenge. As the project wore on, we realized the complexity of our undertaking. To mitigate this complexity, we outsourced the rotor hubs, blades, and flight control. We decided that our efforts within our enterprise would best be split into 3 groups: the rotor group, controls group, and airframe group. The rotor team would be in charge of all things related to the rotors like selecting rotors and blades, developing a model for the rotorcraft’s functionality, and determining the gear ratios internal to the helicopter. The controls team would be in charge of the batteries, servos, and flight computer on the aircraft. The airframe team would be in charge of designing and building a custom airframe that stays within a weight budget of 250 grams, is sufficiently strong, and allows for the location of center of gravity to be adjusted.
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After spending many hours assembling the helicopter, we were able to do successful tabletop testing where the main rotor and tail rotors were spun and all degrees of freedom were demonstrated. We decided not to do a flight test of the helicopter because we were worried about shearing off the small plastic gears inside and did not have a good place to fly it. We also had somewhat of a significant CG offset and our skids were not built to withstand landing forces. We are very happy with what we accomplished in less than a month! We named the helicopter the "Kellercopter" after our professor who was immensely helpful throughout this project, Dr. James Keller.
