ahaDRONE Kit: The Cardboard Drone for Everyone

A Versatile and Eco-Friendly Drone Design by Srinivasulu Reddy

The ahaDRONE Kit was inspired by the vision of "A Drone for Everyone." Recognizing the high cost and environmental impact of traditional drones, Reddy and his team embarked on a mission to develop a more accessible and sustainable alternative. Through extensive research and experimentation with corrugated technology, they re-engineered the entire corrugation process to create a medium suitable for modeling quadcopter airframes.

What sets the ahaDRONE Kit apart is its unique combination of opensource airframe design, 5-ply engineering corrugated board, and opensource flight controller software and hardware. The kit, available as a flatpack, includes everything needed to build and fly the drone. Its low environmental footprint allows for easy customization by altering the airframe or software, making it as simple as cutting and gluing paperboards or editing a few lines of code in Arduino Studio, the easiest opensource programming toolchain available.

The realization of the ahaDRONE Kit involved revisiting century-old corrugated technology and re-engineering it for aerospace applications. The team studied the interaction between cellulose fibers and glue, enabling them to better understand the characteristics of the paperboard, such as warping, bonding, and stiffness. By re-engineering the fluting and pasting machines, they were able to produce corrugated boards with minimal warping, uniform stiffness, and high strength.

The technical specifications of the ahaDRONE Kit are as follows: Kit Dimensions - 458 mm x 458 mm x 30 mm, Weight: 2.28 Kg, All Up Weight of the fully assembled drone: 250 Grams.

Operating the ahaDRONE Kit is intuitive and user-friendly. The kit contains all the necessary components, including the flight controller, battery, propellers, motors, and accessories. The eight airframe boards with component cutouts are stacked to form a flat pack, and assembling the airframe is made easy with essential instructions printed on the boards. A detailed guide is also available through a QR code URL. Once assembled, the drone can be piloted using any smartphone or tablet with WiFi capability, without the need for app installation. The flight controller has an onboard web server that provides remote controller functionality.

The ahaDRONE Kit was developed over the course of a year at facilities in Adarshnagar and KLE Tech Park in Hubli, as well as at the corrugation partner's locations in Bangalore. The project involved extensive research into corrugated board production and concurrent airframe design and prototype drone experiments.

Despite facing numerous challenges, the team overcame them with creativity, technical expertise, and perseverance. The development of a corrugated board with uniform stiffness in all directions and the ability to maintain flatness in diverse atmospheric conditions proved to be the most difficult hurdle. Additionally, designing a useful quadcopter airframe within the constraints of an 18-inch square cardboard required iterative development and countless iterations.

The ahaDRONE Kit, with its lightweight and eco-friendly design, offers a unique and enjoyable experience for drone enthusiasts. With its opensource nature, it encourages creativity and customization, making it a truly versatile and accessible drone for everyone.

The ahaDRONE Kit was awarded the Bronze A' Design Award in the Toys, Games, and Hobby Products Design category in 2019. This prestigious award recognizes designs that exhibit strong technical and creative skills while contributing to quality of life improvements. By incorporating best practices in art, science, design, and technology, the ahaDRONE Kit showcases the ingenuity and resourcefulness of its creators, making the world a better place.