Abstract

By 2050, 68% of people will live in urban areas, which will create increasing pressure on the mobility infrastructure, increasing certain problematic aspects of cities. As cities get bigger, efficient, and sustainable urban mobility will become a major challenge. To address this problem, it is fundamental to be able to design cities taking into account the 3 possible dimensions, and to develop technologies that allow the air mobility of both goods and people. Drones are seen as a medium-term solution to these problems.

A drone has been manufactured using a Composites 3D printer. The design of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) has been carried out and the manufacture of the different elements using long and short carbon fiber, looking for the configuration that provides the best combination of mechanical properties with a lower weight of the drone.

Extensiometric gauges are designed and printed on a flexible substrate using a combination of conductive and dielectric inks and the gauges are embedded in the composite during the manufacture of the pieces. These embedded gauges allow monitoring the flexion produced in flight of the drone frame, monitor bumps and defects during the useful life of the drone and increase the functionalities of the UAV without increasing the weight of the same and the number of elements.

Likewise, the conventional wiring has been replaced by printed wiring making the connections between the motors and the speed controllers.