Week 4: Reading

I'm going to be perfectly honest, it's been 7 days, and this is what we have to show for it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: nothing

If you read my last blog post, you might know that I have been having some slight shipping issues.
Next week, I'll include a re-enactment of my feelings towards shipping...

Basically, I'm not happy that I don't have any parts, but enough about that.
Left with nothing to actually work on, Pratik and I have metamorphosed into something beyond novice engineers and hobbyists, we have evolved into... bookworms. Or should I say devolved...

We walked backwards. And I while I look snazzy
as a worm with a bowtie, I prefer being a person. 

Basically, since we can't actually work on our quadcopter, we've been doing all of the reading that we possibly can, so that if and when the parts ever get here, we can get the world record for fastest quadcopter assembly ever. (not really. But yes really).

We have been focusing our research into two areas: assembling the quadcopter, and the physics of flying.

I'll start with the physics.
As a professor of physics at the G Institute of Legitimacy, I can tell you with absolute certainty that airplanes and helicopters are much easier to fly than quadcopters.

Basically, and airplane has one vector (it goes in pretty much a straight line.)

Except this one. I don't know what direction that is.

Helicopters get a little more complex, as they have two propellors. The top rotor produces a vertical lift vector (it goes up and down) and the back rotor counteracts the torque of the main rotor (it no go spinny spin).
Then we have the tricopter, which is never used because its kinda ridiculous (*cough useless cough*)
And finally, we have the quadcopter.
With 4 different propellers, the quadcopter can go up, down, left, right, forward, backward, 1° right, 97° southwest, cartwheel, backwards in time, into the tenth dimension, you get the point.
There are a lot of different ways that it can fly, all of which require perfect balance among all 4 of the blades. Otherwise someone may end up missing a finger. Or a head.

There are 4 basic directions for quadcopter movement: nick (a popular name), roll(good with butter or jelly), yaw(n), and throttle(what I'd like to do to shipping companies).

Nick, also known as pitch, is the angle in relation to the tail of an aircraft.
Roll is the angle at which the aircraft turns, relative to the wings.
This, in a quadcopter, can be confusing. Since all 4 sides are the same, you have no idea which one is which. That should be fun to fly.
Then we have throttle, which is basically where the quadcopter goes up and down.
Finally, we have yaw. Yaw is the simplest of the 4: it's basically turning from side to side.
Use this word if you want to sound fancy when driving. Warning: may cause confusion?
"Should I turn left?"
"Yaw right!"
"No, turn right!"
"But you said ya right! Should I turn left here?"
"Yaw right!"
"Oh, I'm right?"
*turns left*
"You're never driving again"
"You suck at giving directions"
"I said yaw right!"
"JUST SAY TURN OR I WILL YAW RIGHT INTO YOUR HOUSE"

You may have noticed there's no "forward" direction. That's because there isn't. Instead, you tilt to one side, and basically glide downwards in that direction while throttling upwards. Confusing, right?

This was my reaction too

The trick to doing each of these actions is balancing different pairs of rotors.
We'll start with the basics:

Hovering: All 4 rotors are spinning in perfect harmony. Like a Dwayne Wade alley-oop to LeBron James, all of the flight controls are n sync, ready for an amazing slam du-- i mean hover.
Similarly, to go up or down, all 4 motors either accelerate or decelerate.

Dwayne Wade not pictured.
Can I have this instead of a quadcopter?

Tilting: In order to pitch (nick) or roll, two rotors on the same axis are manipulated. One is accelerated, while the other is decelerated. This causes the quadcopter to rotate around the other axis.
Basically, imagine that you have an x. Put a propeller on both sides of one stick. If one goes faster, it lifts that side up.

Yaw: turning is the most confusing of the movements.
Quadcopters are always set up with two propellers turning clockwise, and two turning counterclockwise. Otherwise, it would constantly spin in circles.

These propellers create opposing torque, so that the quadcopter stays put. Each propeller essentially acts like the tail rotor of a helicopter.
So, if we speed up the two motors turning clockwise, and slow down the two motors turning counter-clockwise, then the torque will make the quadrotor turn clockwise. Et voila.

With the combination of these 4 angles of turning,
the quadcopter has 6 degrees of freedom (CHI-SQUARE THAT I DARE YOU)
Yeah, it's that awesome.

Summary: physics are confusing, shipping still sucks.
To see the research we did on constructing the quadcopter, see Pratik's blog: quadrotorgeniusproject.blogspot.com/

More interesting blogs to follow:
brookesknitting.blogspot.com/
ccphotograph.blogspot.com/
iphonefanboyblog.blogspot.com/

Resources: All of the stuff I learned was an amalgamation of various sources, so I couldn't really accredit each section with a particular source as I usually do. But thanks to all of these websites!
qdrone.jimdo.com/project/flight-physics/
www.thomasteisberg.com/quadcopter/
www.rcheliwiki.com/Roll,_pitch_and_yaw
my.opera.com/operacopter/blog/2012/01/20/quadcopter-physics-part-1-why-so-interesting
theboredengineers.com/2012/05/the-quadcopter-basics/