An army of quadcopters, for just a few bucks...

Hello readers,

It has been a while since I lasted posted something. I had no inspiration, and I was busy doing other things so yeah... But I had a party yesterday, during which I came up with an idea. It's inspired by a civalization like no other, a civalization that has shaped the western world. The Romans. They had an army which used formations, it was very organised. I believe every formation had a signal. This would be copiable using robotics. Simple robotics. But it still would be expensive to buy 10 quadcopters to create a flying "Roman" army. So I came up with a solution. But I don't know if it works...

First you'll have to make a frame. A base with four sticks on each side so that it will become a cross like shape. Attached to the ends of the sticks are (helicopter)rotors on axels which are this way allowed to rotated freely verticly. On the base is a motor, small and electric, and a light battery which delivers enough power for the motor. This motor is connected to all four rotors, so that the all spin at the same speed. This will create balance withouth difficult calculations which would create demand for a computer-like system. Beneath the base is another stick that is able to rotate freely around verticly. This stick is a bit thicker and holds another rotor. It also holds two other electric motors. One to power the rotor, and one to steer the stick. This system allows for steering withouth varying the rpm between the upper rotors. The controls are simple, a slider (or maybe even only a on/of button) for the height, a rotary knob for the thick-stick (which works like the arrow keys only then with more directions which each send a different signal to the motor of the thick-stick), and a slide (or again a on/of button) for the lower rotor. But these are only manual controls. If you would find a way to record the controls for a forming formations, and a way to play this when a certain drum sound is played. Then you would have an army of flying quadcopters that reacts to drumbeats. I think that I'll post a way to program the formations using cards with holes another time.

You need three motors, some material for the rotors, 4 thin sticks, 1 thick stick maybe pvc tubing, a battery, three rc recievers, some materials for the controller and rubber bands to transmit motion from the motors to the rotors. Oh, and some other things which you can figure out yourself. Just to stay creative (-_^)

Mel