Among the most progressive applications of brushless motors is the drone. Let’s take a quick insight into what drones are and their types
Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, are flying robots that can be controlled remotely or can fly autonomously using embedded systems
Drones are used for a variety of purposes including surveillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring, videography, agriculture, defense, etc. Drones have different features depending on the purpose they are being used
Drones consist of numerous components including electronic speed controllers, flight controllers, GPS modules, battery, receiver, cameras, sensors, etc
There is no standard classification of drones. They can be categorized based on their size, range, endurance or purpose. Let’s discuss the three main types of drone
A fixed wing drone comprises a rigid wing and resembles an aeroplane in looks as well as operation. These drones cannot be stationary at a position with vertical lift rotors. Instead, they glide on a fixed path till their energy permits
Fixed wing drones are considered way more efficient than any other type of drone. They are quite popular in the military, where a manned flight turns out to be perilous or challenging. Fixed wing drones can also be used for aerial mapping, agriculture, surveillance, etc
Advantages
Single rotor drones are robust and resemble a helicopter in structure. They consist of one big rotor on the top and a smaller rotor on the tail to help with direction and stability. Single rotor drones are typically used for research, aerial LIDAR laser scan and surveying
The most popular choice for a drone, especially for aerial photography and videography, is the multi-rotor drone. It is also popularly used for surveillance, leisure, agriculture and construction. The multi-rotor drones have multiple rotors on their body
They can be further classified based on the number of rotors like tricopters, quadcopters, hexacopters and octocopters having three, four, six and eight rotors, respectively. So far, quadcopters are the most popularly used multi-rotor drones
Drones can be designed and programmed to perform combative maneuvers. They can also be engineered to land or perch on inclined surfaces to then climb towards better communication areas
Certain drones can be programmed to control flight with different flight modelizations like the VTOL designs. These unmanned aerial vehicles can also perform perching on flat vertical surfaces
The improvements in the reliability of the UAVs aims at all aspects of the drone systems using fault tolerance and resilience engineering techniques.
