This repository is published and maintained by the Volkswagen Group Machine Learning Research Lab.

Robust Quadrotor Frame for Machine Learning and Control Research

This repository contains the source code of mechanical parts used for the construction of a quadrotor frame suitable for machine learning and control research. The requirements for such a frame are:

Protect propellers and internal parts from crashes and drops from midair
Possibility to mount sensors around the perimeter
Easy to manufacture in-house
Lightweight structure

This resulted in the following frame design.

Materials and Manufacturing

All models for digital manufacturing can be compiled using the included makefile. The program openscad needs to be installed on the system. The files are stored in the build folder after running the following command.

make -j

3D Printed Parts

The following parts should be printed in PLA on a 3D printer.

1x Holder for Battery	4x Mount for Motors

24x Holder for Distance Sensors	1x Mount for Raspberry Pi

Laser Cut Parts

The following parts should be cut out of 2 mm thick polyamide with a laser cutter.

1x Drone Cage Top	1x Drone Cage Bottom

4x Drone Cage Sides	4x Drone Cage Pillars

Related Publications

If you find the code or models in this repository useful for your research, please consider citing our work. The quadrotor frame described in this repository is used in the following paper and dissertation.

@misc{beckerehmck2020learning,
  title={Learning to Fly via Deep Model-Based Reinforcement Learning}, 
  author={Philip Becker-Ehmck and Maximilian Karl and Jan Peters and Patrick van der Smagt},
  year={2020},
  eprint={2003.08876},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.RO}
}

@phdthesis {karl2020unsupervisedcontrol,
  author={Maximilian Karl},
  title={Unsupervised Control},
  type={Dissertation},
  school={Technische Universität München},
  address={München},
  year={2020}
}

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