To contract with Chongqing Zhongyida Technology Co.,Ltd. (CZT) for a collaborative design and construction of a drone meeting specific research requirements not available form current drone manufacturers.
A Novel Actuation Design: Conventional multirotor drones apply thrust in a fixed direction relative to their airframe.
The CFI JELF research we have proposed investigates the extension of actuation capability of conventional
multirotors by actively varying the direction of thrust relative to the vehicle using additional servomotors. The novel
actuation scheme is not currently available from existing drone manufacturers. The proposed supplier CZT is the
only company able to develop such capability given their expertise in novel drone actuation technologies.
2) Open Development Environment Compatible with Existing U of A Infrastructure: CZT will supply an open source
development environment which is compatible with our existing drone infrastructure. Having this environment is
critical as it accelerates our research given our familiarity with the software and hardware. Further, our research
contributions require the ability to customize the hardware and software. This customization is only possible with
the proposed open-source framework provided by CZT
