Hexcopter


Finally, I completed making my first drone. I wanted to make something new so I chose to make a Hexacopter. Its the first Hexacopter ever made in my college. Above is the video of its first flight test.

The Hexacopter is an under-actuated, dynamic vehicle which uses six rotors to push air downwards to create a thrust force for keeping the hexacopter on the air. They offer higher power abilities hence it can have much better elevation and speed controls as compared to quadcopters.

UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are gaining popularity for their capability of flying without an onboard pilot. They can be controlled using an operator autonomously. The interest of the research community for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) design is fast growing up with the aim of developing cheaper and more capable machines.

Flight Controller: APM 2.8
The flight controller is the mind or ‘brain’ of the Hexacopter. This board is what sits at the center, controlling the firmware within the ESCs, consequently controlling the spin rate of the motors. Essentially, it takes the inputs from the receiver (Throttle, Elevator, Rudder, and Aileron) and adjusts the motor RPM accordingly, via ESC.APM contains gyroscope, accelerometer, barometer and a compass.

Motors : 1000Kv and ESC: 30A
The electronic speed controller or (ESC) is what tells the motor how to spin. It is responsible for controlling the rate at which the motor it is connected to, spins. Since the multirotor motors are supposed to spin at variable speeds, depending on control inputs, ESCs are crucial. Each motor will have an associated ESC connected to it. The ESCs are connected to the batteries via the power distribution board within the hexacopter’s frame. Most ESCs come with a battery eliminator circuit (BEC) which acts as a voltage regulator, allowing other electronic components like the flight controller and receiver to power up without connecting them directly to a battery.

Radio remote control is used to control the vehicle manually. To maintain all systems, I have used a 6 channel transmitter here. 4 channel controller sends commands to the drone to affect its throttle, yaw, pitch, and roll.

Hexacopter can be used in Automatic Pollination of the field of crops, Search and rescue operations, Traffic monitoring, Exploring hazardous sites, Military surveillance, Weather and climatic mapping, Photography, Drone-delivery services, Unmanned gun shooting (Tikad).

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