U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

Task 2
The Innovation of the Quadcopter (Drone) for
Commercial Purposes
ZHANG HUI(Jessica) 86092
Geoffrey Ryan Class:U06

1
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

Humans have been imitating the characteristics of birds to invent aeroplanes

for many centuries. Although the military has been in a leading position in the
development of this field, the aircraft also increasingly helps the public
achieve their commercial purpose in this technology era. With the
development of lightweight materials, more efficient solar energy, improved
engines and lithium polymer batteries, these civil aircraft have gradually
become electrically driven. Quadcopters are one of the most famous
representatives. This essay will explain the operational characteristics of the
quadcopter and introduce how to apply these characteristics in the agriculture
and the e-commerce industry. Then it will evaluate some contributions and
detractions that the quadcopter brings to society and the field of study.

The quadcopter can be defined as a unique unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

which uses four propellers to provide lifting power. Since the end of the 19th
century, many small prototype helicopters had been designed and built
because the invention of the internal combustion engine could provide enough
power, while they were never able to fly in the sky for a long time (Desmond,
2018). The Jerome-de Bothezat helicopter, designed by George de Bothezat
for the US military in the early 1920s, was the most famous one when it was
called the first successful quadcopter (Desmond, 2018). Although it proved
the feasibility of the quadcopter design, the internal combustion engine could
not provide sufficient power to it. Desmond (2018) emphasizes that the
Jerome-de Bothezat helicopter was soon scrapped because of complicated
operation and hard horizontal movement. According to Kreps (2016), between
World War I and World War II, some developed countries such as Britain and
the United States have developed a series of radio-controlled drones, which
are mainly used as aerial practice targets.

Since then, there has been no dramatic development in quadcopters.

2
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

However, in the 2010s, with the development of new materials and the
miniaturization of electronic components, quadcopters developed rapidly
(Mogili & Deepak, 2018). Unlike the design a century ago, modern quadcopter
configures its propellers in a letter "X", and each propeller directly connects
with an individual motor, which is powered by a battery and controlled by a
central board that is responsible for controlling flight. The two propellers on
the same diagonal rotate in the same direction. One pair of propellers rotate
clockwise, and the other pair rotates counterclockwise. Changing the speed of
a single or pair of propellers can adjust the altitude and the direction of the
aircraft [CITATION Vil10 \l 2052 ]. There are significant differences in the
capabilities of these new drones: some are semi-autonomous, which requires
human remote control; others are autonomous, which is based on artificial
intelligence and chooses the optimal solution according to the actual situation.
By 2012, the number of countries with drones had raised to 76, and the
number continued to increase (Kreps,2016).

There may be some improvements in the future development of drones.

Haque, Muhammad, Swarnaker and Arifuzzaman (2014) propose that the
power supply of quadcopters will shift from batteries to solar systems, which
will reduce the cost of using the quadcopter and make it more prevalent. In
the foreseeable future, the quadcopter will have opportunities to combine
more advanced artificial intelligence technology to improve the ability of
autonomy and accomplish tasks safely under particular circumstances
(Custers, 2016).

The first application of quadcopters is agricultural surveillance. The standard

configuration of such drones is a sprayer for spraying pesticides, as well as
sensors and cameras for surveillance. High-tech agricultural drones are also
equipped with wireless networks and artificial intelligence chips to enable

3
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

them to achieve working autonomous (Duggal, Sukhwani, Bipin, Reddy &

Krishna, 2016). In general, agricultural drones are detected by multispectral
cameras. It can recognize different wavelengths of light, which is well known
as colours. During the first flight, a multispectral camera scans the entire crop
area and generates a spatial map (Mogili & Deepak, 2018). At the same time,
sensors which are installed in the four corners of the quadcopter capture data
once a second, record the reflectivity of light on the plant surface and store it
in a memory card. Professional software will calculate and analyse the data,
with values ranging from-1 to 1 (Duggal et al.,2016). Different colours figure
has different meanings, for example, close to 0 means there is no vegetation
on the crop, and close to 1 indicates the highest density of cyan leaves.
Based on the results of these analyses, farmers can quickly determine which
areas need to be sprayed and estimate yields (Mogili & Deepak, 2018).
However, Duggal et al. (2016) claim that using multispectral cameras alone to
estimate crop yields may cause significant errors because light can be
blocked by leaves, branches and other shields, which is a challenge for the
sensors recording and the software colour analysis. Therefore, artificial
intelligence chips and wireless networks are added to the design of more
advanced prototypes. The former can model the system as n-order Markov, a
more complex mathematical model, analyse the shape of crops while
analysing colours, in order to improve the accuracy of yield estimates; while
the latter enables agricultural drones to analyse data directly and further plan
the route to minimize the waste of pesticides.

Another future potential application of quadcopter is to deliver packages in the

e-commercial industry. Micro-controllers and gyroscopes of drones can
accurately locate and navigate through GPS, similar to Google Maps in a
mobile phone, and fly to their destination without remote controlling. After
customers purchase goods online, the computer in back-end control rooms of

4
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

the e-commerce corporations will send destination data to the quadcopter.

According to Singireddy and Daim (2018), the drone can transmit the location
information back to the control room, where it will share real-time location data
with customers during transportation every five minutes. After arriving at the
destination and delivering the package, the quadcopter can autonomously
return to accept the next mission. In order to have advantages in the
marketing competition, several companies have implemented the concept of
drone delivery. For instants, Haque et al. (2014) show that Amazon has
developed a drone prototype that can carry approximately 5-pound parcels
which account for three fourth products in Amazon and plans to provide drone
delivery service for Amazon Prime members. In addition, Elliot (2013) reports
that the DHL, a German postal company, holds a test that delivers medicine
and food using quadcopter to areas where are lack of road access. Kreps
(2016) mentions that Titan Aerospace, a solar power drone company, has
been acquired by Google and used quadcopters to transport goods in
Australia.

Drones play an essential role in achieving commercial purposes. However,

nothing is perfect, and quadcopters should also be evaluated.

Improving efficiency is one of the most significant advantages of using

quadcopters in commercial activities. According to Mogili and Deepak (2018),
before the use of drones in agriculture, the agricultural field was faced with
significant losses due to untimely spraying of pesticides and large errors in
yield estimates caused by inaccurate information. Currently, farmers can have
an agricultural quadcopter for less than $1000, which can be processed in
real-time using on-site-specific agricultural information. Changing different
monitoring device can also observe the changes in water and nutrient levels
in the soil in order to optimize the location of planting, how to prevent and

5
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

control diseases and the way of irrigation. Kreps (2016) points out that
agricultural drones replace the farmers to complete the repetitive labour
activities, and even if they reduce 1% on farm costs such as pesticides and
fertilizer, and increase productivity by 1%, the total savings in the world-
around agricultural field are considerable.

The drone will be conducive for the e-commerce platform to reduce

transportation costs such as duration and price, which have significant effects
on companies in the e-commerce industry. Although most of these companies
currently maintain long-term and stable cooperation with express service
providers such as FedEx and UPS, they need to pay high transportation costs
(Singireddy & Daim, 2018). Haque et al. (2014) infer that if they do not have to
rely on delivery companies, more fund will be allocated to other parts of the
supply chain, which may yield considerable profits according to economics.
Besides, drones have few insurmountable obstacles in the sky, and this
situation makes drones more mobile and flexible than ground vehicles which
cannot transgress traffic light. Even if the quadcopters encounter skyscrapers
or flocks of birds, they can easily avoid them by using sensors.

In addition, marketing demand can stimulate the development of drones.

Custers (2016) states that quadcopter projects usually require a significant
scope of knowledge in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and
computer science. The increasing demand for quadcopters provides excellent
opportunities for practitioners in the different engineering field to collaborate
as a cross-function team and make significant improvements to the
performance of quadcopters. Improved quadcopters can continue to be used
commercially, which is a virtuous circle.

Using quadcopter for commercial purposes is effective and worthy which are

6
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

key factors to assist development in business companies. However, some

people have argued that there is no unified regulatory authority for drones and
questioned its safety.

One considerable issue is how to regulate this innovation. With the increasing
demand for quadcopters, the attention of the public has been paid to the
supervision of them. The commercial use of quadcopters means that it has a
legitimate sales process and is convenient to use. Kreps (2016) concedes that
drones can cross road or foot traffic obstacles and even small drones are
convenient to equip with weapons which make it become the ideal option for
terrorists. Unknown drone formation flew over French nuclear reactors in 2014
(Agence France-Presse, 2014) and unidentified quadcopter landed on the
White House lawn in 2015 used to causing panic (Miller, 2015). Although
these two incidents did not create a substantive hazard, they exposed safety
problems that may be related to the lack of regulation of quadcopter. Besides
these, Mateou (2016), who is an orbital mechanics assistant professor, points
out that the use of unencrypted GPS systems by drones is also a critical
factor in making commercial drones potentially dangerous. If a hacker fakes a
GPS signal, the device of the drone owner may no longer be able to track the
original signal. Lost drones are difficult to recover, and the social problems
they cause cannot be blamed.

Even if commercial drones normally operate, they may pose a threat to

children and pets. Singireddy and Daim (2018) demonstrate that the high-
speed rotating propellers of drones can cause direct damage. Curious
children and pets may actively approach danger while the sensors of
quadcopter cannot predict how children and pets will react and avoid them in
time.

7
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

In conclusion, as an innovation, the quadcopter has great improvement

compared with the design in the past. Its main features are lightweight,
convenient to control and can fly for a long duration. The quadcopter has
successfully applied in agriculture and may make considerable contributions
in delivering packages for the e-commercial cooperation in the future. Not only
farmers improve the efficiency of agricultural production by using the drone to
spray pesticides and detect the growth of crops, but also it can theoretically
help some industries reduce transportation costs. However, the monitoring
system for drones is still incomplete, and it may become the tool of choice for
terrorists, which is a potential threat to society. The most important
expectation is to improve the regulatory laws and treaties on drones so that
drones can play a full role in commercial purposes.

Actual word count: 1926 words

Required word count: 2000 words

8
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

References

Agence France-Presse, (2014, October 31). More drones spotted over French
nuclear power stations. The Guardian. Retrieved from
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/31/more-drones-spotted-
over-french-nuclear-power-stations.

Custers, B. (2016). Flying to New Destinations: The Future of Drones. In B.

Custers (Eds.), The Future of Drone Use (pp. 371-385). Hague,
Netherlands: T.M.C. Asser Press.

Desmond, K. (2018). Electric Airplanes and Drones: A History. North Carolina,

U.S.: McFarland & Company.

Duggal, V., Sukhwani, M., Bipin, K., Reddy, G. S., &Krishna, K.M. (2016,
May). Plantation monitoring and yield estimation using autonomous
quadcopter for precision agriculture. Paper presented at the 2016 IEEE
International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), Stockholm,
Sweden. Abstract retrieved from
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7487716

Elliot, D. (2013, December 9). DHL testing delivery drones. CBS News,
Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dhl-testing-delivery-drones/.

Haque, M. R., Muhammad, M., Swarnaker, D., & Arifuzzaman, M. (2014,

April). Autonomous Quadcopter for Product Home Delivery. Paper presented
at the 2014 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and
Information & Communication Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Abstract
retrieved from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6919154

9
 U06 1904 Task2 86092 ZHANG Hui (Jessica）

Kreps, S. E. (2016). Drones: what everyone needs to know. New York, NY:
Oxford University Press.

Mateou, S.M. (2016). Terrorism and National Security. In B. Custers (Eds.),

The Future of Drone Use (pp. 153-172). Hague, Netherlands: T.M.C.
Asser Press.

Miller, Z.J. (2015). Drone That Crashed at White House Was Quadcopter.
Retrieved from https://time.com/3682307/white-house-drone-crash/.

Mogili, U. R., & Deepak, B. (2018). Review on Application of Drone Systems

in Precision Agriculture. Procedia Computer Science, 133 (2018), 502–
509. doi: 10.1016/j.procs.2018.07.063

Singireddy, S. R., & Daim, T. U. (2018). Technology Roadmap: Drone

Delivery – Amazon Prime Air. In T. U. Daim, L. Chan, & J. Estep (Eds.),
Infrastructure and Technology Management (pp. 387-412). New York,
NY: Springer International Publishing

Villbrandt, J. (2010). The Quadrotor’s Coming of Age. Retrieved from

https://illumin.usc.edu/the-quadrotors-coming-of-age/.

10