ViSA: Virtual Swashplate Aircraft

Rodolfo and I propose a new approach to achieving flight without traditional control surfaces, drawing inspiration from the University of Pennsylvania Modlab's swashplate-less bi-copter project. Their design uses a motor-driven propeller with a hinge mechanism that tilts the propeller in one direction during acceleration and the opposite during deceleration. This allows the motor to apply torque and control the propeller using only acceleration adjustments, creating an underactuated system where a single motor can achieve three degrees of freedom—pitch, roll, and translation along the y-axis. By using two such motors, six degrees of freedom can be achieved.

To our knowledge, this innovative motor design has not yet been applied to fixed-wing UAVs, despite the potential for significant efficiency gains by eliminating control surfaces while maintaining full flight control. Our project aims to implement this concept, creating a fixed-wing aircraft with swashplate-less, motor-actuated control. We call our project ViSA: Virtual Swashplate Aircraft—designing and implementing a revolutionary control surface-less fixed-wing aircraft.

We plan to improve Modlab's design by creating a custom spring setup on the hinge mechanism to achieve active feedback of the propeller hinge's angle based on torque feedback from our FOC ESC.

This project recently achieved approval from the Science Review Committee of MSEF.