By Michal Barcis, Agata Gniewek, Roland Jung, and Petra Mazdin

The growing market for small drones has lead to the availability of new models for both consumer and commercial purposes. At the same time, there is an increasing interest of scientists to do drone research, which ranges from exploring the control of a single drone to establishing intelligent swarms of drones. The question is: Which drone to choose for our research activities in the context of our doctoral school on networked autonomous aerial vehicles? This question will be discussed in this short blog post.

When comparing different drone models, certain constraints need to be considered. Our work in multidrone systems puts a constraint in terms of the price per unit. Other relevant constraints and considerations are as follows: Release date, flight time length, computational power, take-off weight, payload (additional sensors or load), dimensions (a compromise between the payload and the size), low level controller specifications, wireless connections, sensors on board, open-source software, quality of documentation, possibility to customize a platform, and compatibility with PX4. These requirements are not the only ones but are the most relevant ones for our research. …