UniQuad: A Unified and Versatile Quadrotor Platform Series for UAV Research and Application

Yichen Zhang^†, Xinyi Chen, Peize Liu, Junzhe Wang, Hetai Zou, Neng Pan, Fei Gao, Shaojie Shen

HKUST Aerial Robotics Group, ZJU FAST Lab
Submitted to IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation @40 (ICRA@40)
^†Indicates Corresponding author

arXiv Paper GitHub YouTube

The quadrotor platforms in UniQuad series provided in this article, namely Uni250L, Uni127C, Uni350CL and Uni250C from left to right.

Abstract

As quadrotors take on an increasingly diverse range of roles, researchers often need to develop new hardware platforms tailored for specific tasks, introducing significant engineering overhead. In this article, we introduce the UniQuad series, a unified and versatile quadrotor hardware platform series that offers high flexibility to adapt to a wide range of common tasks, excellent customizability for advanced demands, and easy maintenance in case of crashes. This project is fully open-source at https://hkust-aerial-robotics.github.io/UniQuad/.

Platform Overview

The UniQuad series consists of four quadrotor platforms, namely Uni250L, Uni127C, Uni350CL, and Uni250C. These platforms are designed to cover a wide range of applications, from indoor navigation to outdoor mapping. The UniQuad series is equipped with various sensors, including RTK, Intel RealSense D430, D435, and Livox LiDAR Mid-360, to provide accurate and reliable data for different tasks.

Specification of UniQuad Series

Model	Wheelbase	Motor^*	Propeller	Weight	Battery Capacity	Equipped Sensor	TWR^**	Flight Duration
UNI-127C	127mm	F1404 KV3800	Gemfan 3016	468g	4S 3000mAh 30C	Intel RealSense D430	≅2.77	7min
UNI-250C	250mm	F60PRO KV2550	Gemfan 5043	848g	4S 2200mAh 45C	Intel RealSense D435	≅7.03	8.5min
UNI-250L	250mm	F60PRO KV1750	Gemfan 5043	1258g	6S 3300mAh 50C	Livox LiDAR Mid-360	≅5.46	12min
UNI-350CL	350mm	F90 KV1300	Sunnysky EOLO8	1526g	6S 3300mAh 50C	D435 & Mid-360	≅5.54	15.5min

^*All motors are purchased from T-MOTOR (https://store.tmotor.com/categorys/f-series-motor).

^**Thrust-to-weight ratio (TWR) is calculated using data obtained from the motor test report available on the T-MOTOR official website.

Experiment results

Experiment results of the trajectory following experiments. The first row shows the composite images of the flight recordings. The second row illustrates the trajectory commands in black curves and the onboard state estimations in green curves. The average tracking errors(m) during the experiments in (x, y, z) axes are indicated in each subcaption respectively.

UniQuad Series Models

Features

Wheelbase

Weight

TWR

Flight Time

UNI-127C

127mm

468g

2.77

7min

UNI-250C

250mm

848g

7.03

8.5min

UNI-250L

250mm

1258g

5.46

12min

UNI-350CL

350mm

1526g

5.54

15.5min

More Extensions

Uni250CL RK3588 (LubanCat-4), Uni250L Avia, Uni350CL RTK Gimbal ...

Video Presentation

Projects using UniQuad

APACE: Agile and Perception-Aware Trajectory Generation for Quadrotor Flights

FALCON: Fast Autonomous Aerial Exploration using Coverage Path Guidance

Acknowledgements

Nxt-FC: Mini PX4 for UAV Group, https://github.com/HKUST-Aerial-Robotics/Nxt-FC
ZJU Fast-Drone-250: https://github.com/ZJU-FAST-Lab/Fast-Drone-250

BibTeX

@article{zhang2024uniquad,
        title={UniQuad: A Unified and Versatile Quadrotor Platform Series for UAV Research and Application}, 
        author={Yichen Zhang and Xinyi Chen and Peize Liu and Junzhe Wang and Hetai Zou and Shaojie Shen},
        journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.00578},
        year={2024},
      }