Human-Carrying Drone

Human-Carrying Drone project image: First Commercial Flight Computer — First Commercial Flight Computer

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Drone Body Four Arm Configuration — Drone Body Four Arm Configuration

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Four Arm Configuration — Four Arm Configuration

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Eight Arm Configuration — Eight Arm Configuration

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Drone With Mounted Chair — Drone With Mounted Chair

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Tri-Fold Presentation — Tri-Fold Presentation

Human-Carrying Drone project image: Flying Over School for Graduation — Flying Over School for Graduation

Drone Project Video

Watch my drone in action!

Overview

This human-carrying drone was designed and built as part of my high school senior project. It is capable of ~30 minutes of unmanned flight or 12 to 15 minutes of manned flight, with a modular design that supports two configurations: 4 arms or 8 arms. The modularity allows for increased flexibility, extending total flight time in unmanned configurations and simplifying assembly and testing, as the arms can be attached individually.

The drone generates approximately 68 lbs of thrust per arm, with each arm equipped with two 8318 MAD motors paired with 34x10.5” folding propellers. This coaxial configuration features 16 propellers in total, offering key advantages over the standard quadcopter design. The increased number of propellers provides redundancy and fault tolerance—if a motor or propeller fails, the drone can still remain operational. Additionally, the effect of a larger total propeller area for a given frame size significantly improves thrust-to-watt efficiency, allowing the drone to generate more lift with less energy consumption. Altogether, the system produces about 548 lbs of combined thrust, enough to lift the weight of the batteries, frame, and a person.

Power System

The power system consists of 16 LiPo batteries arranged into four 2S2P blocks, delivering a nominal 44.4V to each pair of arms. Each battery pack is rated at 22.2V and 16Ah, providing a total onboard energy capacity of 5.7 kWh. These batteries were the most significant cost component, making up nearly half of the $5,500 total project budget, with the batteries and charger alone totaling $2,700.

Frame and Construction

To keep costs low and construction straightforward, the frame was built using 3/4” aluminum square tubing, bolted together with standard 3/8” hardware from Home Depot. The baseplate was made with a repurposed 15/16” piece of plywood, while the landing gear was constructed using old coffee table legs. Although this design was not optimized for weight, it was inexpensive, durable, and easy to fabricate with simple tools such as a hand drill and circular saw. By purchasing these tools second-hand, the total cost for the frame—including tools—was under $300.

Flight Computer and Electronics

The drone’s initial flight control system was built using an Arduino with a 16-channel servo driver board to independently control each motor. However, as the project progressed, challenges with processing sensor data, ensuring reliable telemetry, and maintaining control under complex physical conditions exceeded the capabilities of this setup. To address these issues, I upgraded to a commercial Pixhawk flight computer designed for agricultural drones.

Since the Pixhawk only supported 8 PWM outputs, I wired the electronic speed controller (ESC) inputs for the upper and lower motors of each arm in parallel. This allowed the flight computer to control both motors on a single arm as if it were a single rotor. Additionally, the bottom motors were reversed to ensure that both motors on an arm rotated in the same direction. While this diverges from the standard coaxial drone design, which typically achieves zero net directional torque on each arm through the use of counter-rotating propellers, this solution enabled the Pixhawk to operate in a standard “octocopter” mode.