Drone with One Motor and Propeller: Working Principle and Assembly

Developer Joshua Bird has presented a compact drone capable of flying on a single motor and propeller, which is radically different from standard quadcopters with four propellers.

Control Principle

The design includes a propeller on top of the body and tail fins at the bottom. The key element is the rotor's swashplate, which allows changing the blade pitch angle during each rotation to deflect the thrust vector.

Precise control requires the controller to know the exact position of the rotor in every phase of rotation. The system works as follows:

• a modified ArduPilot autopilot sends commands at speeds up to 400 times per second;
• the moteus motor controller adjusts torque depending on the propeller's rotation angle.

Limitations and Navigation

This scheme does not allow separate control of rotation around the vertical axis. The gyroscope accumulates error over time, causing the drone to lose spatial orientation.

Currently, this problem is solved using a fixed infrared beacon for course calibration. Future versions plan to replace it with an onboard scanner that will allow the device to orient itself based on surrounding objects.

Open Source Code

The project is fully open source: GitHub hosts case and propeller models for Fusion 360 and STEP formats, as well as modified code for the autopilot and motor controller.

You can build such a drone yourself if you have a 3D printer and sufficient patience.