What disciplines do I need for building a Quadcopter?

[JimBakker]

Hi everybody, new to the forums :) I have a personal dream to build a drone/quadcopter from scratch. I'm aware it's not an easy task, and I've also searched this forum (and Google) for similar threads before posting:

• Drone Building
• Building a Quadcopter (links to what seems like a useful PDF)
• One of the links even recommended a book.
• Google search took me to this interesting tutorial as well.

My Question(s)

My goal is first simulating a quadcopter before building it, but when looking at the PDF suggested in the second link, I cannot understand most of the symbols found in the document. Quite frankly I'm lost and only guessing certain parts :(

• I'd love to know the minimum knowledge in order to understand this document in particular.
• Is there a site where I can easily find the definition of every Mathematical symbols, other then Wiki and this?
• My Math and physics background is based on 3D game programming. I'm no professional, but I can write my own 3D scenes in modern OpenGL using C++. So I'm able to construct matrices and multiply them in order to create model, view, projection matrices.
  
  I can also give my simulation basic high-school physics: like springs, gravity, etc. But unfortunately, I've learned everything on the Internet in bits and pieces just to get a scene running.
  

If I learned math and physics from a programmer point of view, how can I learn to read math and physics in that PDF? I'll handle the electronics part, but reading this document is my problem.

Thank you very much for reading!

 

[anorlunda]

I looked at the paper. It's pretty good except that the author is sloppy in defining his variables. Your problem is not that you lack a dictionary of mathematical symbols, but rather that you lack basic physics, mechanics, calculus and differential equations. I don't think the gaming approach will work. You need real physics.

But there is a way to do it without two years of engineering school. khanacademy.org provides perhaps the easiest possible way to learn those things you need. Check it out.

 

[JimBakker]

I looked at the paper. It's pretty good except that the author is sloppy in defining his variables. Your problem is not that you lack a dictionary of mathematical symbols, but rather that you lack basic physics, mechanics, calculus and differential equations. I don't think the gaming approach will work. You need real physics.

But there is a way to do it without two years of engineering school. khanacademy.org provides perhaps the easiest possible way to learn those things you need. Check it out.

Wow, that was a quick reply, thanks Anorlunda. I guess you read that document the same way a programmer reads code. I really hope I can do that as well.

So you suggest I try learning: basic physics, mechanics, calculus and differential equations? I'll search and prepare my study curriculum immediately if that's the case.

 

[berkeman]

You can have a look through this Wikipedia page to start to get more of a feel for the math behind Control Theory and Feedback...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory

 

[JimBakker]

You can have a look through this Wikipedia page to start to get more of a feel for the math behind Control Theory and Feedback...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_theory

Berkeman, thank you very much for sharing as well. Sorry about the late response. Going back to basic physics, calculus and mechanics as Anorlunda suggested first, and hopefully I'll get it afterwards.

 

[timthereaper]

I took a graduate level course in control systems for flight dynamics and this was the textbook that they used:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691149216/?tag=pfamazon01-20

It was really interesting because the techniques that were used here were developed out of research done for the US Air Force. There was a small startup formed in order to sell an autopilot built on the technology and it was somewhat recently acquired by Lockheed Martin. What I really liked about the course is that the book starts from first principles and develops the theory bit by bit. At first it develops the equations of motion, then talks about sensors (including GPS) and filtering, and eventually ends somewhere near path planning with waypoints. Although the book focuses mainly on fixed-wing aircraft, there is enough there that the leap to quadrotors won't be too bad.

The prerequisites for this are probably a good understanding of linear algebra, calculus, kinematics, and maybe some fluid dynamics.

 

[donpacino]

http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/initial-setup.html
http://aeroquad.com/content.php?s=3472a694898e0a7ce67ca95215454bc8

The two above sites are UAV communities based around building their own drones. They have everything from pre-built kits ready to go, to guides on selecting hardware. Both communities have their own software packages you can download. All the software is fully open source, so you can modify, or re-write it to your hearts content, or add to it.

 

[donpacino]

http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/choosing-a-frame.html#choosing-a-frame
http://ardupilot.org/copter/docs/co...ller.html#common-choosing-a-flight-controller

I would recommend ardupilot. There are two guides above.