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Senior Paper
Senior Paper
AP Physics
12 C
6 December 2016
Flying a Drone with Pre-set Flying Controls
The purpose of this experiment was to come up with a way to fly a plane without direct
input to the remote, and to fly it in two different flights: One from start to a point ten meters
away, and land within a meter, and one from start, to that point, and land at the start within one
meter. The experiment benefits the community as it could provide a much easier programmable
drone for recreational use, and for private uses, such as photography and aerial surveillance.
To do this the drone controller was hooked up with servos through a thin metal rod. The
rod was able to move the sticks without breaking them and without activating the other portion
of the stick since each has a dual purpose control. This allowed two different controls on two
different sticks. Forward and backward movement on the right, and left and right turning on the
left. The program was programed and then it was set off on its flight path. After the flight was
finished, there was a toggle of the flight and the drone landed. After the drone landed the radial
distance was measured from the last way point, and the data was that distance. The main goal of
each trial was to get within a meter of the last waypoint three times in a row. After that was done,
The hypothesis of the experiment was that the drone would be able to successfully fly the
two different types of flight. In the end, after 21 flights for flight AB and 32 flights for flight
ABA, the hypothesis was accepted as for both of the different flights were considered to be
multiple successes. Errors were apparent throughout the experiment including the lately notice of
battery life of the drone affecting its flight, and the delay between the drone lifting off and the
Introduction......1
Review of Literature....2
Problem Statement...6
Experimental Design....7
Conclusion.16
Acknowledgements....18
Works Cited...24