Design and Fabrication of Electromagnetic Attachment Mechanism for a Hybrid Drone for Mars Exploration

View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-1296.vid This paper aims to design and fabricate a prototype of an autonomous multirotor drone that can dock into a larger fixed-wing drone for Mars exploration. The multirotor must be able to locate and dock into the fixed-wing drone with only a thermal imaging sensor and inertial measurements using on-board image processing capabilities. Engineering analysis was performed to design both the fixed-wing and multirotor drones. Two quadcopters are constructed using off-the-shelf components, including small thermal cameras, hobby drone components, Raspberry Pis, and various sensors and peripherals. Electromagnetic coils mounted on the fixed-wing drone are used to interface with neodymium magnets mounted on the top of both multirotors. An image processing algorithm has been created to locate the relatively hot electromagnetic coils compared to the background temperature for locating docking points. This design indicates a novel combination of fixed-wing and multirotor drones for planetary exploration.