Canfly: A Can-sized Autonomous Mini Coaxial Helicopter

The development of autonomous rotary-wing UAVs has shown an evident tendency in miniaturization. However, the side effects brought by miniaturization, such as decreased load capability, shorter flight duration and reduced autonomous ability, seriously hinder its process. In this paper, we first investigate the configurations of different rotary-wing aircraft and optimize the configuration selection. Afterward, with several elaborate mechanisms contributing to the miniaturization, we present the hardware design and control strategy of a mini coaxial helicopter, which is 62% smaller than the state-of-the-art autonomous mini quadrotor so far in collision area [1]. Meanwhile, abundant experiments reveal that it achieves impressive traversability and is capable of conducting autonomous tasks in unknown dense scenarios, while maintaining satisfactory performance regarding loadability and flight duration.