For the past couple of months, I’ve been building myself a surveillance drone. My craft consists of a remotely-controlled quadcopter – a small helicopter with four rotor blades that looks like a flying X – with an onboard video camera that sends a live feed back to my laptop base station. It also transmits telemetry data about its altitude, speed, bearing and location from its onboard global positioning system receiver. In future, I plan to equip the aircraft with an autopilot system that will allow it to fly from one GPS-specified location to another without my having to pilot it.
過去數月，我一直在為自己組裝一架無人偵察機。我的無人機由一臺遠程遙控的四軸飛行器構成。四軸飛行器是一種小型直升機，上面有四個旋翼葉片，看起來像個飛起來的X符號。這架無人偵察機上配有機載攝像機，可以向我的筆記本電腦基站發回實時反饋信息。通過機載全球定位系統接收器，無人機還可以把飛行高度、速度、方位和位置的遙感數據傳輸回來。未來，我計劃給無人機裝配上自動駕駛系統，這樣，即使我不遙控它，它也可以按照全球定位系統的命令，從一個地方飛到另一個地方。