Denzel Carter

Denzel Carter is a graduate student in mechanical engineering investigating stop-rotor aircraft that reconcile the efficiency gap between multicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Traditional VTOL platforms face a critical tradeoff: multicopters hover efficiently but consume excessive energy in cruise, while airplanes achieve efficient cruise but require runways. His stop-rotor concept uses a convertible lifting surface that rotates as a rotor in hover, then stops and functions as a fixed wing in cruise. The most critical phase is the dynamic transition, where the main rotor must safely decelerate, lock, and transfer control authority to auxiliary servos while maintaining stability. As a MathWorks Fellow, Denzel will develop a comprehensive software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop simulation environment that models time-varying aerodynamic coefficients during blade-locking and autonomously adjusts the control allocator weighting matrix. This framework will enable safe validation of the transition before deploying to physical hardware for motion-capture flight tests. Denzel will also release generalized control-allocator modules as open-source resources for the VTOL community. These advances could make VTOL aircraft with substantially reduced energy consumption more practical.