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Quaffle

the amazing quadrotor
by Daniel L. Lu, Richard Lee, and Anson Liang

Quadrotors were amongst the earliest rotorcraft, but they were unpopular because pilot workload was too high.

de Bothezat quadrotor, 1923

Nowadays, most quadrotors are UAVs, both commercial and military.

Draganflyer X4

Quadrotors have many advantages over helicopters.

Angular momentum is balanced.

The two diametrically opposite pairs spin in opposite directions, cancelling each other out. A helicopter has to have a tail rotor to do compensate for that.

Quadrotor rotors are relatively small.

The rotors individually have less kinetic energy and potential for damage compared with a helicopter rotor. Also, higher velocities can be achieved with less torque and vibrations.

Quadrotors have fixed axis rotors.

A helicopter has to tilt its rotor using a swashplate and adjust the pitch: more mechanically complex.

A quadrotor doesn't need any extra moving parts - it only needs to adjust the speeds of its rotors to fly.

But how does it work?!

hover