The mini-helicopter that’s just a metre across

Dr Tony Dodd of the University of Sheffield's Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering is currently working on an uninhabited air vehicle which will have enormous potential in a variety of applications when it becomes commercially available.

The vehicle is being produced as part of a research programme entitled, 'Development of a mini-UAV for Urban Environments' which is itself part of a worldwide consortium called the World Universities Network Intelligent UAV Group. This is a collaboration between 19 research-led universities from the UK, Europe, US, China, Australia and Canada and brings together the world's leading experts in this field.

The latest prototype produced by Dr Dodd and his team is a quad-rotor mini-UAV. It consists of a central hub unit containing the power, computer and monitoring systems, and four arms each with a rotor on the tip. The four rotors provide total control in six directions - up, down, left, right, forward and backwards. Remarkably, the whole vehicle has a span of less than a metre.

The quad-rotor design has a number of advantages when compared to a conventional helicopter or dual rotor system. It uses power very efficiently and has a better payload to size ratio. It's also very simple mechanically and is more stable, manoeuvrable and robust.

At present, the project has no funding, but Dr Dodd is in discussion with the Home Office and expects the mini-UAV to be fully operational in three to five years. It may even be commercially available sooner and offer many additional features including radio control, for instance. It will also offer the option of customisation to meet each customer's individual needs.

This will enable the mini-UAV to be used for a wide range of applications in urban environments. It could be used in rescue work if part of a building collapses, for example. Or as a search and rescue tool to help find people using the range of cameras it carries. Since it is airborne, it can fly over rubble without the risk of causing further problems.

In addition, the mini-UAV can be used in a number of different urban applications both inside and outside buildings: security, military, communications relay, pollution monitoring, Police and surveillance, traffic monitoring, fire service, crowd control, building inspection and mapping from the air.


For further information, please contact Dr Tony Dodd at:

tel: 0114 222 5636

email : t.j.dodd@sheffield.ac.uk