Rocky Lite: Minimally compact and agile quadrotor
Designed and built in collaboration with: Alex Spitzer, Curt Boirum

Components

Frame Armattan Chameleon TI 6 inch
Flight Controller mRo Pixracer
ESCs Kotleta20
Motors F80 Pro 1900kv
Props Dalprop 7in 3 blade clear
Power Distribution Board Holybro Micro Power Module (PM06)
Power Lumenier N2O 1500mAh 4s 120c Lipo Battery
Comm Zigbee Radio
Onboard Compute N/A
RC Enabled N/A

Gallery

System

Chassis

The vehicle uses an Armattan Chameleon Ti 6 inch mount. For our purposes, we remove the FPV camera mount and the back radio mount, and instead use custom standoffs to hold the upper plate to the base plate, allowing for a higher stack height and reduces unnecessary weight.

Motors + Prop

The motors are T-Motor F80 Pro 1900kv equipped with 7 inch 3-blade dalprop propellers.

Electronics

The flight controller is an mRo Pixracer connected to four separate Kotleta20s ESCs, using the Sapog open source firmware. In our use case, we’re looking for ESCs that allows closed-loop RPM mode. For most FPV drone racing, the lack of Closed-loop RPM requires for the operator to adjust thrust accordingly in order to compensate for voltage changes as the battery depletes. For autonomous flights, having closed-loop RPM allows for precise thrust control. The ESCs are connected to the Pixracer via CAN buses. All components are supplied with power via the Holybro Micro Power Module.

Specs

Weight 665 g
Effective diameter 30.6 cm
Maximum Flight Time 15 min hover
Max Velocity (3m trajectory) 8 m/s
Max Acceleration (3m trajectory) 30 m/s2