Design and Testing of an Octocopter for Aerodynamic and Power Consumption Modeling

This report presents the design, development, and testing of the Generic Aerodynamic Modeling for Multirotor Aircraft (GAMMA) vehicle, a multirotor aircraft designed to collect flight data for model identification. An avionics suite was selected based on findings from bench tests to ensure that motor speed and power consumption can be measured accurately in flight. A custom maneuver injection software was developed for GAMMA that creates the capability to perform automated flight test maneuvers. This software was implemented using the Mathworks(R) UAV Toolbox and maintains the original control system of the PX4 open-source autopilot, eliminating the need to develop custom control logic for this capability. Moreover, additional functionalities were added to the software to improve flight test efficiency and safety, such as the creation of parameters for configuring flight maneuvers and the implementation of custom failsafe logic. Preliminary flight test results are presented which demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach for collecting flight data for performance and flight dynamics modeling.