Bihari Engineering student has designed an innovative ‘quadrotor’ helicopter with four rotor engines.

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 Nitesh Kumar, an engineering student has the unique existing example  of Madhubani district of north Bihar, studying in Mohali-based Chandigarh Engineering College has designed an innovative helicopter with four rotor engines. It has been depicted in Bollywood film “3 Idiots”.
He demonstrated this indigenous model in Patna on Sunday before a group of mediapersons and aero-modelling enthusiasts.

Nitesh has built a ‘quadrotor’ that can fly at a considerable altitude. He claimed that the device is an ideal aid for aerial surveillance. It has a GPS system, three cameras and micro-controlled processor and while in flight, it can simultaneously send live video footage to a computer screen.

He named his product A Heart’s Wing and hoped that he would get assistance from the state government to enhance his prototype model.

 "It can cover a range of three km in four minutes and has a wireless camera. It can be used for navigation work without a pilot using a GPS system," said Kumar who hails from Jhanjharpur (Madhubani), the native place of minister Mishra. The son of a farmer, Kumar spent about Rs 1.20 lakh on developing this machine and said he imported spares from the US, Hong Kong and Thailand.

Nitesh toiled for a year to design and assemble this prototype.

He said so far he had done everything on his own but now want to be guided in the right direction. If the state government provides some assistance, then he can further modify his innovative creation, he told mediapersons.

He said he would like to increase the accuracy for automated flight, after which it could be operated by a person positioned in a single location.

The device's range can be increased up to five kilometres and aerial surveillance can be done from quite some distance. This would definitely reduce the dependency of government and expenditure on helicopters and can useful in flood-hit areas or where army personnel can not reach easily.

According to reports the Rural Development Minister of Bihar, Nitish Mishra learnt about Nitesh’s creative talent, and brought it to the notice of the central and state governments as well as former president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.

As he is the son of  a small farmer from flood prone Madhubani district he hoped that his chopper would be of great help to the people of the state.

What is quadrotor Helicopter ?

A quadrotor, also called a quadrotor helicopter or quadcopter, is a multicopter that is lifted and propelled by four rotors. Quadrotors are classified as rotorcraft, as opposed to fixed-wing aircraft, because their lift is generated by a set of revolving narrow-chord airfoils. Unlike most helicopters, quadrotors generally use symmetrically pitched blades; these can be adjusted as a group, a property known as 'collective', but not individually based upon the blade's position in the rotor disc, which is called 'cyclic' (see helicopter). Control of vehicle motion is achieved by altering the pitch and/or rotation rate of one or more rotor discs, thereby changing its torque load and thrust/lift characteristics.
Early in the history of flight, quadrotor configurations were seen as a possible solution to some of the persistent problems in vertical flight; torque-induced control issues (as well as efficiency issues originating from the tail rotor, which generates no useful lift) can be eliminated by counter-rotation and the relatively short blades are much easier to construct. A number of manned designs appeared in the 1920s and 1930s. These vehicles were among the first successful heavier-than-air vertical take off and landing (VTOL) vehicles. However, early prototypes suffered from poor performance, and latter prototypes required too much pilot work load, due to poor stability augmentation and limited control authority.
More recently quadrotor designs have become popular in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) research. These vehicles use an electronic control system and electronic sensors to stabilize the aircraft. With their small size and agile maneuverability, these quadrotors can be flown indoors as well as outdoors.
There are several advantages to quadrocopters over comparably-scaled helicopters. First, quadrotors do not require mechanical linkages to vary the rotor blade pitch angle as they spin. This simplifies the design and maintenance of the vehicle. Second, the use of four rotors allows each individual rotor to have a smaller diameter than the equivalent helicopter rotor, allowing them to possess less kinetic energy during flight. This reduces the damage caused should the rotors hit anything. For small-scale UAVs, this makes the vehicles safer for close interaction. Some small-scale quadrotors have frames that enclose the rotors, permitting flights through more challenging environments, with lower risk of damaging the vehicle or its surroundings.
Due to their ease of both construction and control, quadrotor aircraft are frequently used as amateur model aircraft projects.