Four is better than one

Nov 10 4:22pm

Things that fly are neat, and pretty useful. I really like neat so I’m building something that flies: a small-scale quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle or UAV. It’s conceptually really basic, just a cross with four motors at the ends that provide lift and by changing the power to each motor allow you to control where in goes. Simple.

The hard part is figuring out how to control it. In fact its too complex to be controlled by a human operator alone. Thus the main problem is to write some smart software that either helps stabilize the quadrotor or flies it with no human input. There’s a whole engineering field devoted to solving issues involved in controlled highly dynamic systems: control theory, my new friend I’ll surely be getting very familiar, if not quite intimate, with.

But not just yet. Before the software comes the hardware needed to run it. And for something flying through the air you need sensors in every direction to tell you what’s going on in terms of your motion. A 3-axis linear accelerometer and a 3-axis gyrometer are what’s needed (and sufficient), as seen below in the schematic (Click for a closer look). Those plus a microcontroller, power supply and wireless module.

Next comes the board layout.