All we have heard about drones has negativity attached to it with governments using it to kill people but now a new project has been launched (and successfully funded) that aims to use a gas powered quadcopter to autonomously deliver as well as pick up payloads in order to help people in crises and in areas that are not easy to reach.
Started as a final year project for students the quadcopter is named the Incredible HLQ (stands for Heavy Lift Quadcopter and inspired by HULK superhero). It is capable of lifting heavy loads and carry supplies of food, medicines and other stuff to distant areas. It can pick up loads of up to 50 pounds. The Incredible HLQ quadcopter weighs little compared to the payload it can lift up in the air and costs much less than other solutions. The Incredible HLQ quadcopter features two separate gasoline powered two-stroke engines that feature 12.5 HP each. It has four commercial RC Helicopter rotor heads spinning four 435mm blades.
For the flight control Incredible HLQ features a DIYDrone’s Ardupilot APM2.5+ module, which is open source control board system for UAV’s. The quadcopter will also feature payload identification and tracking using OpenCV libraryon Roboard RB-110, which is a complete computer on a single board. It feature 486 compatible processor running at 1GHz and can run Windows, Linux and Dos operating systems.
The Incredible HLQ has successfully been funded and will be made a reality very soon. This student project show us how autonomous quadcopters can be used for good and become useful in disastrous situations such as earthquakes or floods in areas that are hard to reach. And due to the fact that it is powered by Senegalese it can be refueled and used immediately.