Quadcopter

From EFlightWiki
Jump to: navigation, search
Front view of a Rotor Concept HPQ1/LotusRC T380 radio controlled quadcopter
Left view of a Blade mQX micro quadcopter
This ultra-micro Heli-Max 1SQ is smaller than its transmitter, is capable of outdoor flight even in a slight wind and will fit in the palm of one's hand

A quadcopter, quadricopter, quadrotor or quad is a type of radio controlled and/or GPS controlled electric helicopter.

Quadcopters generally consist of a central hub from which four radial arms extend at ninety-degree intervals. The ends of each arm are equipped with an upward- or downward-facing outrunner motor driving standard and reverse rotation model airplane propellers or quadcopter-specific propellers.

The result is an extremely stable yet nimble model aircraft with high payload capability. This makes the quadcopter an excellent base for aerial photography, FPV flight or as an autonomous flying robot/unmanned aerial vehicle.

Similar to the quadcopter is the Y-copter. In this configuration, there are three arms radiating at 120-degree intervals with one or possibly two motors per arm. A hexcopter or hexacopter has six radials at 60-degree intervals. The terms multicopter and multirotor can apply to any helicopter of this basic type.

Each rotor produces both thrust and torque, with rotors one and three rotating clockwise and rotors two and four counterclockwise. This makes the net aerodynamic torque and angular acceleration about the yaw axis exactly zero in much the same manner as a coaxial helicopter. Directional flight is induced by mismatching the balance in aerodynamic torques, i.e., by offsetting the equal thrust of the motors at hover. This eliminates the need for linkages of any kind in a model quadcopter.

While the lack of linkages makes a model quadcopter among the simplest of flying models from a mechanical standpoint, the electronics necessary to fly a quadcopter are often extremely sophisticated. Many rely on an inertial measurement unit combining a gyroscope with an accelerometer, barometer and magnetometer. This may be tied into a standard R/C system, a programmable GPS system, a first-person-view system or a combination of any or all of the above.

MultiWii stabilization systems based on the software used to control the gyroscopes and accelerometers found in the control wands of the Nintendo Wii video game system are both effective and popular.

Popular too are discrete frames and components for those wishing to build their own custom quadcopter.

Perhaps the best-known RTF and ARF quadcopters are manufactured by Taiwanese model manufacturer Gaui.

Notable applications

Illustration of how a quadcopter's propellers provide lift as well as cancelling torque
The e-volo VC-1 manned multicopter
  • Several nano-sized quadcopters were successfully programmed and flown in a series of computer controlled formations by Alex Kushleyev and Daniel Mellinger, graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science and the founders of KMel Robotics, builders of the nanocopters. On February 29, 2012, Kushleyev, Mellinger and Deputy Dean for Education Vijay Kumar from the University of Pennsylvania's General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception (GRASP) Laboratory introduced a video showcasing a set of KMel nano quadcopters programmed to play both standard and specially built musical instruments at the TED2012 conference in Long Beach, California. The quadcopters, each autonomously programmed, played the "James Bond Theme" on a modified electronic keyboard, a ride cymbal, maracas, a tom-tom and a "guitar" made from a modified couch frame and "strummed" by the quadcopters by stiff wires mounted beneath them. A pre-tuned electric guitar provided the closing chord with a pair of quadcopters strumming the guitar via those same wires. By March 3, the YouTube video produced at the university and uploaded on February 28 had surpassed 1.1 million hits; the original video showing the quadcopters in formation had surpassed more than 5.5 million hits by that same date.
  • The MIT Aerospace Control Lab is doing similar work with variable pitch autonomous quadcopters. Such quadrotors have quicker, more accurate transition to hover from fast maneuvers.
  • The 2010 introduction of the Parrot AR.Drone by French company Parrot SA combines FPV, video, combat and standard flight functions controllable via an Android smartphone or tablet. It is marketed as the "world's first flying video game."
  • The Blade mQX, the world's first hobby grade RTF R/C micro quadcopter introduced in January 2012, relies on AS3X technology introduced by Horizon Hobby in October 2011. AS3X is a three-axis gyroscopic stabilization system which automatically stabilizes micro models which in turn causes them to perform like far larger models, even in wind. The motherboard of the mQX allows it to be flown in "X" configuration (two motors fore, two aft) or "plus sign" configuration (one motor both fore and aft; one motor per side).
  • On October 21, 2011, the first manned R/C multicopter flight was achieved by German aviation company e-volo with their experimental VC-1. The pilot was e-volo's Thomas Senkel who is shown flying the VC-1 in the photo. The aircraft was the result of more than a year of development of both the airframe and flight systems.
  • In March 2012, Dutch artist Bart Jansen combined the taxidermied remains of his tabby cat Orville - named for aviation pioneer Orville Wright - with a LotusRC T580 quadcopter frame. The result was the Orvillecopter, which Jansen said was a tribute to his longtime pet accidently killed by a car. Orville was particularly fond of birds and Jansen thought it would be appropriate to send him among them. The Orvillecopter was scheduled to be exhibited at the 2012 KunstRAI Art Festival in Amsterdam where it proved to be somewhat underpowered. Jansen and R/C helicopter pilot Arjen Beltman updated the internal electronics with HobbyKing units; plans were in place to fit it with larger motors and propellers in time to fly the artwork on what would have been Orville's birthday.
  • A February 22, 2013 story on robotics research site Robohub.com told of a master's thesis project involving autonomous quadcopters by ETH Zurich university student Dario Brescianini. Brescianini developed an algorithm which allows two quadcopters to literally play catch with one another using an inverted pendulum. In this case, the inverted pendulum is a balanced stick with a simple shock absorber consisting of a flour-filled latex balloon at either end.
  • In April, 2013, 40-year-old web developer Jason Muscat proposed to girlfriend Christina Dam in San Francisco, California's Alamo Square with the aid of an autonomous hexcopter. Muscat preprogrammed the hexcopter to deliver the engagement ring to his location as he "popped the question."

External links

Wikipedia
 This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original article was at Quadcopter. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with EFlightWiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Retrieved from "http://www.eflightwiki.com/eflightwiki/index.php?title=Quadcopter"
Personal tools
Google AdSense