Rapid Prototyping Technology for Field Manufacture of Amphibious VTOL Group 1 UAS

Our proposed solution to improving the operational profile of UAS in woodland and maritime environments is to add amphibious capabilities to an existing modular UAS architecture. Light manufacturing has become significantly less expensive over the past 10 years, with significant advents in 3D printing, laser cutting, and other small CNC machines. With modern materials such as high temperature foaming polylactic acid (PLA) plastic, as well as traditional materials like open-cell styrene foam, carbon fiber, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) plastic, the entirety of the fuselage, wing structure, control surfaces, and linkages for a UAS can be manufactured in a small unimproved space such as a civilian office or forward operating base (FOB). The current proposed solution uses 3D printers to manufacture the linkage and mounting components (wing and tail arresting clips, elevon and rudder cams, motor mounts) and propellers. A hot wire cutting machine will then be used to cut the fuselage, wings, and tail from styrene foam feedstock. The VTOL components, built on our existing RAMUAS architecture of modular VTOL configurations, will be added during final assembly. Two key technologies enable this solution: the first is the design of the aircraft and configuration of the flight controller to allow for weaker tolerances. 3D printing and manual-feed hot wire cutting will produce less precise components than injection molding, meaning the aircraft produced may be slightly different than expected by the flight controller. By configuring the flight controller to automatically account for small inaccuracies, even fixed-wing flight and multicopter-assisted supermaneuverability are still possible with a rapidly manufactured airframe. The second technology that enables this solution is the Rapid Attributable Modular Unmanned Aircraft System (RAMUAS) architecture, developed by subcontractor and vendor Robots Everywhere specifically for DropDrone. RAMUAS is an architecture designed to augment existing fixed-wing airframes of various sizes and capabilities (currently developed on Group 1 and Group 4 UAS) with vertical takeoff or landing (VTOL) capability. Using 3D printed components and commercially available motors and propellers, a fixed wing group 1 UAS can be augmented and configured for VTOL capability in under 1 hour. The technical challenges of this program primarily involve the development and adaptation of this solution to the specific needs of USAF customers. The capabilities of the UAS, as well as the specific infrastructure required for its manufacture, will be determined in a feasibility study before the requirements of the solution are documented. This will provide a tailor-made means of deploying large fleets of inexpensive small UAS without a significant requirement for outside logistics, using readily available industrial materials.