Vehicle Design of Tethered Hexaroters for Heavy Payload Applications

This research addresses the vehicle design problem for industry class tethered hexa rotor development project. Hexarotors are unmanned aerial vehicles of resent research interest due to their capability of vertical take offs, landings and hovering at specific locations. Tethered vehicles has the advantage over battery operated flights for not having the flight time restrictions. In existing tethered hexarotors the payloads are lower than 20kg due to the design and the weight of power conversion devices. This paper presents vehicle design and automated cable winding structure of new prototype of heavy payload type tethered hexarotor which is capable of carrying user specified data acquisition device mounted on vehicle weighing more than 30kgs and has capability to provide about extra 1kw power to operate in field operations where reliability is the key factor. The proposed vehicle design is compact, light weighted, aerodynamically and mechanically optimum to proceed to the actual vehicle assembly. The proposed automated cable winding structure makes the tethered system efficient and safe.