Unmanned aerial vehicles and aviation

Today I will bring you some information about quadcopters! These relatively new MAVs (Miniature unmanned vehicles) have great potential to be used world wide. With relatively small size and the ability to "perch and stare" these devices could provide surveillance for a variety of things. The best part is, you can buy one too! Quad-copters sell for less than a $1000 with all equipment included. I've even seen people at my school fly these around with a camera attached, not even watching the vehicle from the ground. These look like tons of fun and I'd love to fly one sometime.

An example of how torque is displaced on a quadcopter Sourc: wikipedia.com

Due to the unique nature of these devices the torque of the propellers must be reversed on the x and y-axis. This can help with stability during flight. You may be asking, how do these devices even turn, and the answer is realtively simple. With each motor controlled by an ESC (Electronic Speed controller) they can be increased or decreased in power extremely fast, which when paired with a receiver can cause the quad copter to rotate on its x, y, and z-axis. These quadcopters are extremely agile, with the ability to fly in formation to accomplish tasks.

One of the first successful quad-copter designs for sale to civilians was the Parrot AR drone. The Parrot AR drone is a flying quadroter helicopter developed by the French company Parrot. This device is intended to be controlled by iOS devices (iphone, itouch, and ipad) and android devices (HTC hero, etc). The drone originally presented at the Las Vegas International Consumer Electronics Show in 2010 is made of plastic and foam and ended up being around 30cm long. It has 2 onboard cameras that can be seen through the controller screen. This all goes to show just how quickly UAVs are developing, I might go by the store and pick one of these bad boys up just to show you guys!