Design and Development of a Quadcopter Drone for Lightweight Payload Delivery in Urban Areas

Small unmanned aerial vehicles are being considered for the delivery of light parcels over short urban distances. This paper presents the design and development of a quadcopter for lightweight payload delivery. The design process covers frame, motor and propeller selection from thrust requirements, battery sizing from the required flight time, and configuration of a flight controller with attitude stabilization and failsafe functions. Thrust-to-weight ratio, flight time and hover stability are evaluated by calculation and simulation for different payloads. In the design calculation the quadcopter has a thrust-to-weight ratio of 2.5 with a 0.5 kg payload and a hover flight time of 16 min, and the simulated hover error was 0.31 m rms.