[Abhimanyu Kumar] has been hard at work building and posting about his quadcopter. So far he’s published ten installments for this build, letting us relive the adventure vicariously. But it’s number 11 that we’re really excited about as he plans to share the first free-flight footage in that one.

The bug was planted in his brain after hearing that a quadcopter was used to shoot some of the footage in Spiderman 2. He wanted one to call his very own but the cost of a ready-made unit was out of his league. So he decided to build one instead. The first version uses aluminum bracket for the cross making up the motor mounts. He added LEDs to liven things up and even made a demo video of the thing tied to a table (no IMU yet so free flight would be fatal). After this stepping stone he decided to go with a Wii Motion Plus and Wii Nunchuck as the positioning feedback sensors. There is also a body redesign with helps lighten the load.

It’s a fun project, and we can’t wait to see where he goes from here!

What’s better than one amazingly acrobatic quadcopter? How about a swarm of acrobatic micro-quadcopters? It’s not a rhetorical question, but an experimental reality. A team at the University of Pennsylvania are showing off their latest round of hovering robots which can move in formation and alter their orientation as a swarm.

You may remember us salivating over the unbelievable stunts the team pulled off with a single ’copter back in 2010. That device needed a sophisticated camera installation to give provide feedback, and this uses the same framework. But we don’t that detracts from the achievement; it’s simply a future hurdle for the project.

The video after the break shows some of the stunts the slew of whirring devices are capable of. Watching them move as a grid, and even landing simultaneously, we can’t help but think of the Dog Pod Grid from Neal Stephenson’s book The Diamond Age. It was used as a protection system, keeping unwanted flying intruders out. Doesn’t sound so far-fetched any more, does it?

http://hackaday.com/2010/05/28/quadcopter-acrobatics-like-nothing-weve-seen/

Swarm robotics is really starting to produce some interesting results. This image is from the video embedded after the break that show a group of five robots creating a landing platform for a quadrotor helicopter. The four that actually make up the platform are not in contact with each other, but instead following commands from the leader. We’re impressed by the helicopter’s ability to target and land on the moving platform. Takeoff appears to be another issue, as the platform bots stop moving until the quadcopter is airborne again.

These robots are part of a Graduate project at Georgia Tech. [Ted Macdonald] has been working along with others to implement an organizational algorithm that guides the swarm. The method requires that the robots have an overview of the location of all others in the swarm. This is done with high-speed cameras like we’ve seen in other robotic control projects. But that doesn’t discourage us. If you already have a flying robot as part of the swarm, you might as well add a few more to serve as the eyes in the sky.

[Thanks Supertroopa via Engadget]

[Tiakson] just wrapped up the construction of a quadcopter which piqued our interest due to the unexpected mix of hardware he used.

A good portion of the copter is made up of the essential bits we have come to expect from a quad rotor system. Instead of using an Xbee or hobby wireless controller however, [Tiakson] opted to use an old Fonera router running OpenWRT to control the system. He wrote special software that allows him to direct the quadcopter using an HTML 5 interface, adding a few kernel tweaks along the way that enabled him to emulate I2C ports over GPIO pins.

The Fonera takes in data from Wii nunchuck and Motion+ sensors, relaying commands to the on-board PIC 16F976 microcontroller. The PIC is used to manage the electronic speed controller modules using PWM, which the Fonera could not handle on its own.

This is a great use for a old router, and the cost is obviously far cheaper than buying off the shelf wireless control modules. We would love to hear how much extra weight the Fonera adds, as well as if there is any controller lag introduced by the web-based interface.

Continue reading to see a quick demo video of the quadcopter in action.

DIY-er [Russell] wanted a quadcopter, and like many people out there, he knew the satisfaction that would come from building it himself. Rather than purchase a kit or follow a set of online instructions, he spent a lot of time researching quadcopters, and eventually put together a thorough tutorial himself.

His Arduino-based quadcopter is named Scout and runs about $1,000 to $1,200 depending on which parts you choose to buy. [Russell] has a complete parts list available on his site, including plenty of alternate component choices for builders on a budget.

He covers the construction process in great detail, discussing frame fabrication and component placement as well as how to program the Arduino for the copter’s first flight. He also takes the time to break down his component list item by item to explain how each piece is part of the greater puzzle, which is great for first time builders.

We love seeing this level of detail when discussing a build process, and as you can see by the video embedded below, his quadcopter looks great!

[Thanks, Willow]

A team from the University of Maryland will be taking their human-powered helicopter to the air tomorrow. The current flight record for this type of vehicle is just over 19 seconds of flight at a height of about 8 feet. What surprises us about this attempt is that they’re not pedaling just one main rotor. It seems that the most success in man-powered helicopter flight has come from helicopters with a total of four rotors.

The image seen above is a 2009 test of just one of the four rotor arms that will go into UMD’s finished chopper. Fully assembled it will be about 1/3 the size of a football field, dwarfing the autonomous quadcopters we usually see around here. Get the details about the design from the video after the break. It’s interesting to hear [Dr. Antonio Filipone] talk about the need to generate both the lift and the thrust, where human-powered fixed-wing aircraft only need the thrust. He predicts that human-powered helicopter flight is possible, but that it will only lift the aircraft, with little possibility of moving it in one direction or the other.

The team is attempting to grab the $250,000 Sikorsky Prize with their creation. We wish them the best of luck.

[Thanks Koldfuzion via DiscoveryNews]

Quadcopters stand aside, here’s a three-rotor helicopter we think you’re going to love. The body is made out of plywood and carbon fiber rods, keeping it light enough to be easily lifted by just 3 motors while making sure the force doesn’t tear the aircraft apart. Three gyroscopes, two accelerometers, three magnetometers, and a GPS module are all used in conjunction for an autopilot system. There’s a lot of great pictures and videos but our favorite, embedded after the break, shows the tricopter writing messages in the sky using light and camera exposure tricks similar to this ground-based trike.

[Thanks Hernandi]

The challenge: can you build a flying turkey that drops pumpkin pie bombs? That’s the question that Utah Aerials asked themselves and they did manage to make it happen. Of course they’re not starting from scratch, but adding a little holiday cheer to an existing quadcopter in the form of a spray painted turkey fuselage. The cheapest pumpkin pie they could find was hung from the copter with care, and dumped thanks to a servo motor. Check the video after the break to see if they were able to hit their balding-bullseye or not.

Seems like the wicked witch music should have been the background for that video.

[Thanks Bill via DiyDrones]

[Greasetattoo] shares the process of building his wooden quadcopter body that won 2nd place in the Minnesota state fair.  His plans were purchased as a kit back in 1999, but he never got around to actually building them. The original plans called for a foam board body, but he felt that a wooden piece of art would be much nicer. This build isn’t focusing on the electronics, they’re just a kit from Mikrokopter. Instead, it is a log of the entire process of making the beautiful wooden body. He really put some nice detail in there from the layered and nicely finished dome to the little oak sleeves for his motors. Great job [Greasetattoo].

Here’s a great tutorial on building your own quadrotor helicopter. This build isn’t necessarily less expensive than others we’ve seen since quality motors, propellers, and control circuitry aren’t cheap. But the design and assembly is well documented and presents a well-planned building procedure. The carbon-fiber tubes that make up the frame have extensions to protect the motors and propellers in the event of a crash. The Arduino, IMU, and transceiver are all tucked away between two aluminum body plates as well. They only thing missing is a solid methodology for tuning the four motors, a critical procedure that is just touched up at the end of the article.

We usually envision small wheeled robots when we thing about swarm robotics but these cooperative quadcopters make us think again. This is an extension of the same project that produced those impressive aerial acrobatics. It may not be as flashy, but watching groups of the four-rotored flyers grab onto and lift loads is quite impressive. There is also a shot of one dropping a 2×4 and immediately compensating for the loss of weight. We’re not certain, but it looks like team lifting doesn’t require the 20 high-speed camera rig that the acrobatics did. We’ve embedded the demonstration video after the break.

[Thanks Balbor]

[Tim] let us know about a video outlining some covert camera devices the Air Force is developing. The video takes a lot of time to explain induction to those who’ve never heard of it but we liked to see the bird-like concept animations. They’ve already developed cameras that will clamp on to power lines in order to use induction as a power source. Shown in the video is an eight-rotor quadcopter they’re hoping to use to deliver the camera covertly. But the animations show a winged robot similar to a hawk that has a camera for a head. Having seen some of the other flying devices in development this may not actually be that far off.

The University of Pennsylvania has churned out some impressive moves with a quadcopter. Perching on a vertical landing pad with some help from Velcro is impressive, but single and double flips combined with navigating through tight spaces at an angle makes this just amazing. We expect to see it in the next Bond film if it doesn’t show up in one of this summer’s action flicks. Kind of makes previously awesome quadcopters look a bit pedestrian. Video after the break.

[Thanks Ideanator via Engadget]

[Karl-Engelbert Wenzel] developed a UAV capable of taking off and landing on a moving platform autonomously. The platform operates aircraft-carrier-style by driving around the room in circles. The quadcopter tracks a grid of IR LEDs at the front of the landing deck by using the IR camera from a Wii remote. The best part is that the flight controls and processing are all done by the copter’s onboard ATmega644 processor, not requiring a connection to a PC. The landings are quite accurate, achieving a maximum error of less than 40 centimeters. In the video after the break you can see the first landing is slightly off the mark but the next two are dead on target.

So build yourself a mobile platform and pair it up with your newly finished quadcopter to replicate this delightful hack.

[William Etter] and his classmates built a quadcopter as a class project. We love the details of these builds and they came through with some thorough documentation. Some highlights that we enjoyed were reading about ABS body design and construction, their analysis of two versus three blade propellers, and their breadboarded control mechanism. You can see their success in the most recent post, but we all know that trial and error plays a role in these builds so we’re glad they’ve shared a collection of crashes with us.

Can’t get enough of this four-rotor action? Check out this project of a similar design.