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Cheap Drone Swarm

A low-cost drone swarm built from off-the-shelf parts and printed frames.

Drones Swarm Robotics Cost Optimization Prototyping
Cheap Drone Swarm

Swarm robotics usually needs expensive hardware. I built a fleet of low-cost drones from off-the-shelf parts and printed frames, running a decentralized control approach for coordinated flight.

What I Did

  1. 01 Selected the cheapest motors, ESCs and flight controllers that still flew reliably.
  2. 02 Designed printed frames so units could be built quickly and cheaply.
  3. 03 Implemented decentralized control for formation flight.

Technical Highlights

01

Cost per unit

Every component was chosen to bring down the per-drone cost without giving up stable flight, so the swarm could scale.

A low-cost drone opened up to see what's inside.
Close-up of the drone's main control board.
Motor and gear pulled from one of the arms.
Battery pack removed from the drone.
02

Swarm control

The drones coordinate without a single central controller, so more units can join without redesigning the system.

Gallery

Bottom shell with the electronics removed.
Frame and arms partly taken apart.
One of the boards from the teardown.