A quadcopter is an aircraft lifted and propelled by four horizontal rotors; each rotor consists of two or three rotor blades. Quadcopters are classified as rotorcrafts or a rotary-wing aircraft to distinguish them from fixed-wing aircraft because the quadcopter derives its source of lift from the rotor blades rotating around a mast. They belong to a larger category of aircrafts defined as multicopters.

Multicopters have various names based on the number of propellers mounted on the craft. A four-propeller multicopter is called a quad-copter, a six propeller multicopter is called a hexa-copter, and nowadays we even have octo-copters.

Over the last few years, remote control airborne vehicles have been incredibly popular for hobbyists, academic research groups, and for individuals who are planning for a start-up. The names of these vehicles vary from quadcopters to quadrotors or even drones. However, they refer to the same vehicle and the most appropriate nomenclature for these crafts is quadrotors. For the sake of simplicity, we will call them quadcopters.

This book will cover the basics of a quadcopter and will guide you on how to build a simple and fully functional quadcopter that is equipped with a camera. Hopefully, by the end of the book you will be able to fly your own quadcopter and capture pictures of your favorite places. All the chapters are necessary for a successful flight and some chapters have instructions on how you can fly your quadcopter, where you should fly, and tips about safety. You should follow all the instructions mentioned and do not skip any of them, even if you feel that a chapter is simple and you have nothing to gain from it.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics: