How do Drones fly?
Drones come in many different shapes and sizes but generally fall into two categories; fixed wing and multirotors. For this blog post we will concentrate on multirotors.
Multirotors, as the term implies the aircraft has more than one rotor. A quadcopter for example has 4 rotors, a hexacopter has 6 and an octocopter has 8.
In manned aviation helicopters achieve stable flight by adjusting speed, angle and pitch of the rotor blades. However multirotors tend to have fixed angle and fixed pitch blades and achieve flight solely through adjusting the speed of each individual rotor. So here’s how it’s done:
The Hover
A quadcopter has four rotors, two that turn clockwise and two that turn anticlockwise. When all rotors are spinning at the exact same speed the forces on the multirotor are equal and it will hover:
The Climb/Descend
If we needed to climb the quadcopter we would increase the thrust on all four rotors equally and vice versa to descend:
The Yaw
If we needed to yaw the quadcopter (that is pivot/turn the quadcopter in the same position) we would increase the thrust to two of the four rotor blades. So if we wanted to turn clockwise (right) we would increase thrust to the two rotors turning anti-clockwise (left) and vice versa to turn the other way:
The Pitch and Roll
Finally if we need move forward/backwards or left/right then we would decrease the thrust of the rotors in the direction we wish to travel and increase the thrust to the opposite rotors.
Now as you can imagine the coordination required to proportionately control each and every rotor is extremely challenging, which is why we don’t do it :) thanks to the wonders of modern technology most multirotors have built in sensors, gyros and control system to stabilise the aircraft and coordinate any required thrust changes.
Check out our website to find out what we are using this clever technology for and how it might help you or your business.