Quadcopters
Posted 22 Feb 2013.
We watched several videos from the Flying Machine Arena last night. This is a fantastic series of projects by the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Controls at ETH Zurich.
My four year old preschooler absolutely loved the quadcopters and was amazed at what they could do. We talked about how people were teaching the robots how to do things and then they were practicing and learning, getting better each time.
The quote of the night came from her as well: “Those quadcopters are kind of like ballerinas!”
These smart quadcopters captured our imagination and while the problems at hand are more about controls, machine learning, coordination than basic things like aerodynamics, I think there is a lot of room for growth and discovery. One of the things I’m excited about is the reduction in price for entry-level systems. I hope that things like the Parrot AR Drone and micro quadcopters that are little more than PCBs, batteries, and rotors can get more of these things in front of curious people.
Microquadcopters are interesting because of both their size and potential low cost. Currently the Syma X1 looks like it’s leading the pack at about $36 for a microquadcopter and a 2.4 ghz remote control. This looks like a ton of quadcopter for the dollar. A detailed forum post on rcgroups has a lot of information. Another rcgroups post and an open source wireless firmware called deviation document the 2.4GHz wireless protocol used by the transmitter to the X1.
It would be interesting to see if this device could be combined with a more autonomous control system like ArduCopter. I’d also be curious what the per-unit cost of one of the Flying Machine Arena quads is and what it could be in volume.
This isn’t a complete list, but it’s a solid roundup.