The Advanced Engineering School of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) is working on the development of a range of electric motors for small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The main goal of the development is to meet the needs of small UAV developers and to enter the most demanded segment of the drone market, the MAI press service reported.
At the moment, a team of engineers and scientists has already created the first prototype of the line, which includes five electric motors with power ranging from 900 W to 10 kW. It is planned that the range will be expanded in the future to meet customer needs. The project is oriented towards mass production, which will allow in the future to move to mass production of motors with attractive technical and economic characteristics for consumers.
Nikolay Ivanov, Head of the Hybrid and Electric Propulsion Systems Laboratory at the Advanced Engineering School Institute MAI Nikolay Ivanov noted that the choice of an engine for an unmanned aerial vehicle depends on many parameters, such as vertical or horizontal take-off method, flight duration and payload. Developers endeavour to offer the most suitable product for each set of conditions. The main focus of the project is to achieve leadership in the most mass market segment, as more than a third of all civilian drones under development in the world have a propulsion power of up to 10 kW, the specialist explained.
The peculiarity of the developed range is its modular design, which allows scaling the motors according to customer requirements. This solution also helps to reduce the cost of manufacturing when moving to mass production. Nikolay Ivanov stressed that the line applies the fundamentals of interchangeability, which is a prerequisite for cost optimisation. This approach will allow components to be easily replaced with Russian analogues without changing the overall design of the device. As a result, the development team expects to gain economic advantages over competitors, which will largely be determined by the scale of production.
“The Russian engineering school, represented by specialists from the Moscow Aviation Institute, creates innovative projects that contribute to the development of aviation and drone technology in the country, thus ensuring its technological sovereignty,” the MAI emphasised.
At the moment, the team is at the stage of negotiations with industrial partners on serial production, which opens up prospects for commercialisation and introduction of the developed range of electric motors on the market.