The quadcopters and multicopters used today are driven by brushless motors as standard. In most cases these drive the propellers directly. A gear is used in exceptional cases. This configuration of the drive is essential to the success of the quadcopter in many technical areas and those of everyday life. They can be implemented easily and without complicated mechanics. In addition, the brushless motors including controllers have efficiencies of over 70% and higher, which also makes the drives very efficient. It is therefore to be expected that this type of drive will determine the quadcopters to be developed in the future. In this booklet, the basics for calculating the motor and propeller combinations are worked out. In all cases, these are supplemented with practical calculation examples.
For quadcopters there are many names. They are also called quadrocopter, quadricopter, drone, multicopter or simply 'UFO'. This type of model construction is very young. It began early in the new millennium with commercial products for flying camera inspections. One sees quadcopters in all sizes and price ranges on the market. They start with the toy quadcopters, which are small and, despite their low price, often surprisingly robust. In this model division, a similar trend can be observed as with helicopter and airplane models. The smaller and cheaper systems are often built as ‘ready to fly’, while larger systems are often available as kits. Contents: - Functionality - Ready to fly quadcopters - Components - GPS, photo and film flight - Flight mechanics - Setting the controller - Dimensioning of motors and propellers - Special shapes, tri-, hexa- and octocopters - Initial operation, sources of errors and flight
Want to make something that can fly? How about a flying robot? In this book, you'll learn how drones work, how to solve some of the engineering challenges a drone presents, and how to build your own--an autonomous quadcopter that you can build, customize, and fly. Your drone will be your eyes in the sky and in places where a human could never get to-much less fit!
This book provides a clear insight about IoD and its requirements, protocols, performance improvement, evaluation methods and challenging aspects, to the readers at one place. The recent enhancement of integrating drone with the Internet of things (IoT) technology promises tremendous global development. The top applications of the Internet of Drones (IoD) are expected to be infrastructure & building monitoring, fire service systems, insurance investigations, retail fulfilment, agriculture and forensic evidence collections. Conventional drone technology is enhanced with the Internet and other emerging technologies such as cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence and communication networks which open up for enormous opportunities like ahead for on-demand service-oriented and user-friendly IoD applications. This book presents extensive knowledge about the role of IoT and emerging technology in drone networks. It focuses on major research areas of the Internet of Drones and its related applications. It provides a strong knowledge platform towards the Internet of Drones for graduates, researchers, data scientists, educators and drone hobbyists.
Learn and apply the principles behind building and flying drones using components like BLDC motors and speed controllers, AeroGCS ground software, Ardupilot and PX4 open-source flight stacksalong with examples and best practices Key Features Get to grips with multicopter physics (roll, pitch, and yaw) and 3D dynamics for defining a drone's flight Optimize drone performance with powerful propulsion systems such as BLDS motors, lipo batteries, and ESCs Build a custom survey drone to learn vital aspects of drone assembly, configuration, testing, and maiden flight Purchase of the print or Kindle book includes a free PDF eBook Book DescriptionUnlock opportunities in the growing UAV market where drones are revolutionizing diverse sectors like agriculture, surveying, and the military. Using the vast experience of the author in drone domain, this book provides step-by-step guidance through the complete drone development life cycle, from concept to pilot stage, prototyping, and ultimately, a market-ready product, with domain-specific applications. Starting with an introduction to unmanned systems, principles of drone flight, and it's motion in 3D space, this book shows you how to design a propulsion system tailored to your drone’s needs. You’ll then get hands on with the entire drone assembly process, covering airframe, components, and wiring. Next, you’ll enhance drone connectivity and navigation with communication devices, such as RFD900, Herelink, and H-16 Pro GCS and hardware protocols like I2C, and UART. The book also guides you in using the open-source flight software Ardupilot and PX4, along with firmware architecture and PID tuning for advanced control. Additionally, you’ll go learn about AeroGCS, Mission Planner, and UGCS ground control stations, tips for maiden flight and log analysis for optimizing performance while building a custom survey drone with a 60-min endurance, 10km range, live video feed, and photography options. By the end of this book, you’ll be equipped with all you need to build and fly your own drones and UAVs.What you will learn Explore the design principles for multicopter flight and its physics of motion Grasp terminologies associated with UAV flight systems Implement power trail, communication, and propulsion conceptsin drone design Use IMUs and sensors in flight controllers, and protocols like I2C, SPI, and MAvlink Familiarize yourself with open-source drone flight stacks and ground control station software Apply the control law used in multicopter and the basics of PIDs Delve into modes of flying with remote controllers and analysis of flight logs Who this book is for This book is for beginner-level drone engineers, robotics engineers, hardware and design engineers, and hobbyists who want to enter the drone industry and enhance their knowledge of the physics, mechanics, avionics, and programming of drones, multicopters, and UAVs. While not a prerequisite, a basic understanding of circuits, microcontrollers, and electronic instruments like multimeter, camera, and batteries, along with fundamental concepts in physics and mathematics, will be helpful.
Build a custom multirotor aircraft! Build and customize radio-controlled quadcopters that take off, land, hover, and soar. Build Your Own Quadcopter: Power Up Your Designs with the Parallax Elev-8 features step-by-step assembly plans and experiments that will have you launching fully functioning quadcopters in no time. Discover how to connect Elev-8 components, program the microcontroller, use GPS, and safely fly your quadcopter. This fun, do-it-yourself guide fuels your creativity with ideas for radical enhancements, including return-to-home functionality, formation flying, and even artificial intelligence! Understand the principles that govern how quadcopters fly Explore the parts included in your Parallax Elev-8 kit Follow illustrated instructions and assemble a basic 'copter Connect the Parallax chip to a PC and write Spin and C programs Build radio-controlled systems that minimize interference Add GPS and track your aircraft through Google Earth Beam flight information to smartphones with WiFi and XBee technology Mount cameras and stream real-time video back to the ground Train to safely operate a quadcopter using flight simulation software
As the sister book to “Introduction to Multicopter Design and Control,” published by Springer in 2017, this book focuses on using a practical process to help readers to deepen their understanding of multicopter design and control. Novel tools with tutorials on multicopters are presented, which can help readers move from theory to practice. Experiments presented in this book employ: (1) The most widely-used flight platform – multicopters – as a flight platform; (2) The most widely-used flight pilot hardware – Pixhawk – as a control platform; and (3) One of the most widely-used programming languages in the field of control engi-neering – MATLAB + Simulink – as a programming language. Based on the current advanced development concept Model-Based Design (MBD)process, the three aspects mentioned above are closely linked. Each experiment is implemented in MATLAB and Simulink, and the numerical simula-tion test is carried out on a built simulation platform. Readers can upload the controller to the Pixhawk autopilot using automatic code generation technology and form a closed loop with a given real-time simulator for Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testing. After that, the actual flight with the Pixhawk autopilot can be performed. This is by far the most complete and clear guide to modern drone fundamentals I’ve seen.It covers every element of these advanced aerial robots and walks through examples and tutorials based on the industry’s leading open-source software and tools. Read this book, and you’ll be well prepared to work at the leading edge of this exciting new industry. Chris Anderson, CEO 3DR and Chairman, the Linux Foundation’s Dronecode Project The development of a multicopter and its applications is very challenging in the robotics area due to the multidomain knowledge involved. This book systematically addresses the design, simulation and implementation of multicopters with the industrial leading workflow – Model-Based Design, commonly used in the automotive and aero-defense industries. With this book, researchers and engineers can seamlessly apply the concepts, workflows, and tools in other engineering areas, especially robot design and robotics ap-plication development. Dr. Yanliang Zhang, Founder of Weston Robot, EX-product Manager of Robotics System Toolbox at the MathWorks
This design guide was written to capture the author’s practical experience of designing, building and testing multi-rotor drone systems over the past decade. The lack of one single source of useful information meant that the past 10 years has been a steep learning curve, a lot of self-tuition and many trial and error tests. Lessons learnt the hard way are not always the best way to learn. This book will be useful for the amateur drone pilot who wants to build their own system from first principles, as well as the academic researcher investigating novel design concepts and future drone applications.
