VTOL Drone Built for competition academic year 2024-2025

For the academic year of 2024-2025, I was a member of the Vertical Takeoff and Landing Drone club at Case Western Reserve University and working in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering team. Our team was tasked with designing a drone that would compete in the Design Build Fly-off competition hosted by the Vertical Flight Society. The competition guidelines and framework for how scoring is completed are sent out in a “Request for Proposal” every fall. In the past academic year, the competition was based around firefighting with drones where we carried 8oz water bottle payloads to different waypoints to simulate forest fire relief.

One personal project I had during the fall was designing a prototype payload dropper. The design used a linkage system to translate the rotational motion of the servo to linear motion of the pin. The pin was placed through a tab that would be epoxied to the water bottle cap. I adapted the design to sit around components that were already present on the 2023-2024 drone which we used for testing.

Focusing on a data driven approach, our team uses tools like MatLAB for analyzing different propulsion systems that we can use by running through a simulated mission model. Additionally there is extensive FEA analysis and weight optimization to ensure that performance is maximized. Our team designed a drone weighing approximately 12 lbs, but with a max payload capacity of 18 8oz water bottles. At competition, our team won the overall competition which was extremely exciting and pushes us to perform well for this year.

This year I was elected to be the Chief Engineer of the club, which means that I lead the Mechanical/Aerospace and Electrical Engineering teams. This is giving me further experience with project management in a fast-paced environment and learn the electrical engineering aspect to drone flight, while I to continue to work on my design engineering. I will update my project page titled VTOL Drone 2025-2026 as progress continues and I am beyond excited to see what my team and I are able to do this year.