Servo - March 2013

Then

and

NOW

Controlling Robots in the Air and on the Ground by Tom Carroll Last October, I wrote about the many ways to control a robot and received some much appreciated constructive feedback on the article.

According to one reader, “the inclusion of quadcopter flight controllers and electronic speed controllers with higher power capacity for large robots would have been nice."

With that in mind, I will go a bit in-depth about some of the R/C systems required for

Radio Control Helicopters Started the Multi-rotor Craze

In the November issue of SERVO, Michael Simpson started an excellent series on multi-rotor flyers and detailed some of the complex systems required to keep these quad and hex beasts flying. If you haven’t done so, I suggest you look at these back issues as they have a lot of good information about flight controllers, electronic speed controllers, and radio gear that I won’t be discussing in this article.

These multi-rotor flyers are proving to be the next level of robotics, and people have added cameras, sensors, and many other things such as high level microcontrollers for autonomous flight. Advanced flight controllers with GPS capabilities allow the flyer to head back home autonomously when a mission is completed, or if the batteries are running low and a crash could be imminent.

Multi-Rotor Craft Can be Difficult to Fly

If you have flown an R/C helicopter that has a single main rotor and uses a tail rotor and collective pitch, you know just how hard it is for a beginner to keep things level and in control. My five-channel helicopter has managed to crash many times, and I’ve had to replace the stripped main rotor gear and the rotor and tail blades. My four-channel copter has crashed more than that.

Most lightweight helicopter structures are not very forgiving when they meet the ground at high speed.

larger robots and combat robots. I am also going to include flying multi-rotor R/C aircraft — a category I have skipped in past articles. l want to stick to standard R/C transmitters, receivers, and associated motor controllers that readers have favored in this follow-on article. Flight controllers are a special type of