Programmer Joshua Bird has created a small drone that requires only one motor to fly. He 3D-printed most of the parts and wrote his own software to teach the device to fly and change direction.
Programmer Joshua Bird has created a small drone that requires only one motor to fly. He 3D-printed most of the parts and wrote his own software to teach the device to fly and change direction.
Bird talked about this on his YouTube channel.
The main trick is an unusual propeller with moving blades. When the engine accelerates, one blade rises slightly and the other lowers. Thanks to this, the drone can tilt in different directions and change the direction of flight.
But there is a caveat. For such a drone to fly, its motor must change its rotation speed hundreds of times per second, and at precisely the right moment. A conventional motor controller could not keep up with such changes and would lose synchronization.
So Bird replaced it with a different, more precise controller and rewrote the motor control software. As a result, the propeller, about 15 cm in diameter, was able to spin up to almost 20,000 revolutions per minute, and the motor could accelerate and decelerate 300 times per second.
But even after that, the drone didn't start flying normally. The programmer conducted his first tests right above his own bed. The device kept falling, crashing into obstacles, and breaking. It was also making so much noise and vibrating that Bird joked that his neighbors probably thought he was turning on the lawnmower in his apartment.
It turned out that the propeller blades were starting to bend due to the high speed. However, after replacing the blades with stiffer ones, the strong vibration finally disappeared.
But there was one more problem. Due to the design features, the drone's body slowly rotated around its axis. Because of this, the device gradually lost its sense of where it was in front and where it was behind. Therefore, when the developer gave the command to fly forward, the drone could already be turned the other way and move in the wrong direction.
Bird then installed an infrared beacon in the room and a sensor on the drone. Whenever the drone turns towards the beacon, the sensor picks up its signal. This way, the device knows which way it’s facing and can execute commands correctly.
After several weeks of experiments, the device finally learned to take off on its own, maintain balance in the air, and obey commands. But it still cannot properly navigate in space without an infrared beacon.
Bird has already made the software code and files for 3D printing publicly available.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that students from Denmark created a drone on a 3D printer that can dive underwater and take off again.
