How a drone works

Drones are in everyone's mouth. Flying robots have become a subject of curiosity and have already become quite popular. But have you stopped to think about what, exactly, drones are?

How do they work? To end these questions, ProfessionalReview has prepared a special text that explains the history of this technology.

What is a Drone?

These popular robots are small flying vehicles remotely controlled by an operator. For magic to happen since they use simpler controls, they can be handled on the screen of a smartphone, to the most complex commands that require remote control via radio.

How does a drone work?

Even the largest of today's drones, it is a relatively very small and very light vehicle. They are generally made of very little carbon fiber, metal and plastic materials. The fiber gives strength and lightness, while the plastic is used in the points of the structure that are not crucial for the strength of the device. The metal is in the screws, batteries and motors.

There are several drone configurations, but the most common are those that use four motors located at the ends of four axes. These small motors are small, round electric thrusters that support the flight of the device and adopt the same principle that explains how helicopters fly.

In the main body of the drone there are batteries that, for reasons of weight, tend to be very small. So even the best drones on the market typically have flight autonomy of just a few minutes.

The fuselage of the apparatus is also a logic board that contains the navigation and control systems. In this circuit, depending on the device, there is a GPS chip that allows more precise free flight navigation. With satellite location positions it is possible to trace a path and release the robot that will follow the path drawn by the controller to the letter.

On the same board there is a computer that receives the navigation instructions in the case of manual control and passes to the engines, increasing or decreasing the acceleration and the altitude. Depending on the device, there are data transmission capabilities for the regulator, ranging from the amount of power remaining in the batteries and from images taken by a built-in camera.

Do drones have artificial intelligence?

Most of them don't. Passively, they obey the orders of an operator on the ground, transmitted by radio from a powerful remote control. You can understand them as passive robotic tools. But there are more complex products that have a certain level of autonomy and flight control, especially the models that are capable of navigating only via GPS.

Applications and uses in the future

Today, drones produced for non-professional consumers are focused on image registration. But there are many people working on the development of technologies and services that can use airplanes to deliver the product in urban settings. Amazon, for example, recently obtained permission to test the service in the United States. Google also flirts with the idea of ​​having its products delivered to consumers using drones.

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