Drones : Quadcopters

Flying Machine Arena, ETH Zurich

Like this? Want to make your own quadcopter and do awesome stuff with it like that or just curious? Nevertheless we are here to help.

This blog aims to introduce you to the fantastic world of drones and more importantly help you make one. Essentially it is a collection of helpful resources from all over the internet to help you get started. Go through them properly, they will also help you in the selection process for the Quadcopter team of ArIES. So without any further ado, let’s get started.

Typical Quadcopter

What is a drone?

An unmanned aircraft or ship that can navigate autonomously, without human control or beyond line of sight.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear Drones? You might know them as the weapons that were used to attack in Pakistan. But there exist a more friendly version of them too. You must have seen them in your family marriages capturing those beautiful moments, or being used by the police to regulate traffic and discipline crowd, and during rescue operations. Well, here at ArIES, we prefer to work with the smaller, the nicer version.

Before getting deeper into the drone technology, let us first get some insights about the drone market and their applications.

According to the Goldman Sachs Research, between now and 2020, a $100 billion market is expected boosted by the growing demands in the commercial as well as the civil government sectors.

These drones find applications in a variety of fields.

Commercial

  • Law Enforcement, Precision Agriculture, Media and Entertainment, Retail, Inspection and Monitoring, Surveying and Mapping, DIY Drones, Education

Military Drones

  • Spying, Search and Rescue Operations, Border Security, Combat Operations

Jack Brown in this blog, presents a nice overview of the drone world. Let us now dive a little deeper into the basic technology and the physics that make these drones as awesome as they are.

The type of drone that we work with is called a quadcopter, meaning, it has four motors enabling its movement. This article perfectly describes the basic physics that make a quadcopter fly. You must have observed that it is quite similar to a helicopter. If not, try to find some similarity between the working of a quadcopter and a helicopter.

In ArIES you get to make your own quadcopter.

Along with the knowledge of quadcopter physics, you must also understand what a quadcopter is made of. Here you will be able to get quite a handful of information in this regards. What’s missing here is how the quadcopter knows its orientation. The flight controller takes help from an accelerometer and a gyroscope housed within itself. They provide different types of information which when clubbed together provides us the orientation of the quadcopter.

Try to find out more about what information does each of them give. Here’s a quick question. Which sensor do you propose to use on a toy car to find its displacement? Are there any problems associated with that?

Anyway, now you know that making a drone isn’t rocket science. You now understand how a quadcopter works and what are the components that make it work. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. You saw the above video, you know what more it can do other than just cinematography or surveying. Presently at ArIES, we are working on quite a few number of projects. Besides making them for the fun and the thrill we are working on making -

  • a quadcopter autonomous using computer vision
  • a 3D printable quadcopter with your android smartphone as its brain
  • them fly in swarm just like bees
A treat for your eyes! ❤

These projects need a lot of efforts and patience but the pure joy and enormous satisfaction on seeing them fly compensates everything. We are eagerly waiting for you to join our team and do lots of cool stuff together. Hope to see you in the selection process.

References have already been provided at appropriate locations above. If you need more, just google!

Goodbye! See you soon @ ArIES — Snehil Vijay

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Artificial Intelligence And Electronics Society

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Artificial Intelligence and Electronics Society (ArIES) is a campus group of IIT Roorkee, with a mission to solve impactful problems of society .

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