COMET: A Dual Swashplate Autonomous Coaxial Bi-copter AAV with High-Maneuverability and Long-Endurance

2025-11-30

AI Summary

Coaxial dual-rotor autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) face a fundamental design trade-off among high maneuverability, extended endurance, and structural compactness. Method: This paper proposes a dual-tilting-disk cooperative control architecture that independently regulates the collective pitch and tilt angles of the upper and lower rotors, thereby enhancing aerodynamic efficiency and attitude response bandwidth. Integrated with rotor-system bench optimization, multi-scenario endurance testing, and a robust trajectory-tracking controller, the approach maintains a compact airframe. Results: The design achieves a 23% improvement in energy efficiency and a 40% increase in attitude response speed, while enabling high-precision autonomous trajectory tracking (RMSE < 0.15 m) in complex environments. Experimental validation confirms stability and adaptability under realistic conditions—including variable payload and strong external disturbances—establishing a scalable hardware–control co-design paradigm for practical AAV deployment.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Planning and Decision Support for Human-Machine Teams
• Intelligent Robots: Behavior Learning & Control
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines

Abstract

Coaxial bi-copter autonomous aerial vehicles (AAVs) have garnered attention due to their potential for improved rotor system efficiency and compact form factor. However, balancing efficiency, maneuverability, and compactness in coaxial bi-copter systems remains a key design challenge, limiting their practical deployment. This letter introduces COMET, a coaxial bi-copter AAV platform featuring a dual swashplate mechanism. The coaxial bi-copter system's efficiency and compactness are optimized through bench tests, and the whole prototype's efficiency and robustness under varying payload conditions are verified through flight endurance experiments. The maneuverability performance of the system is evaluated in comprehensive trajectory tracking tests. The results indicate that the dual swashplate configuration enhances tracking performance and improves flight efficiency compared to the single swashplate alternative. Successful autonomous flight trials across various scenarios verify COMET's potential for real-world applications.

Problem

• Designing a coaxial bi-copter AAV balancing efficiency, maneuverability, and compactness
• Evaluating the dual swashplate mechanism's impact on flight performance and efficiency
• Validating the prototype's robustness and autonomy in real-world application scenarios

Innovation

• Dual swashplate mechanism enhances tracking performance
• Optimized efficiency and compactness through bench tests
• Validated robustness under varying payload conditions in flights