International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Management (IJAEM) Volume 3, Issue 12 Dec 2021, pp: 1116-1128 www.ijaem.net ISSN: 2395-5252 DOI: 10.35629/5252-031211161128 Impact Factor value 7.429 | ISO 9001: 2008 Certified Journal Page 1116 Development and Performance Evaluation of a Quadcopter Olorunnisola Oyeyemi Adeleke *1 , Oluwatobi Olamide Ojekanmi 2 , Idris Adeyemi Seidu 3 *1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria 2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria 3 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submitted: 10-12-2021 Revised: 20-12-2021 Accepted: 24-12-2021 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT The aim of this project is to develop and evaluate a prototype remotely controlled quadcopter with a battery of 850mAh using locally sourced material. The quadcopter was tested and a flight time of 100secs with extra payload of about 40g was achieved. In achieving this, a frame which is the major body of this project is designed and fabricated putting into consideration the weight, strength, and flexibility of the frame and landing skid that can accommodate shock generated while landing the aircraft. MATLAB software was used for few simulations of the Roll, Pitch and Yaw of the flight controller. The developed quadcopter was tested and it met the performance requirements it was designed for.The main problem in quadcopter is the balancing and stability system. Most of quadcopter will be unbalance and loose stability in case there are direct disturbance on it such as wind. In this project design, a stable design with light- weighted frame but high strength to weight ratio was designed and constructed.Material selection for this drone (project) was thoroughly be analyzed to achieve a more stable system. Keywords: Prototype, quadcopter, performance, locally, designed, constructed, aircraft, develop, fabricated, drone, MATLAB. I. INTRODUCTION Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are unmanned flying aircrafts, commonly known as drone, multicopters or multirotors. They are different from the commercial aircrafts and jets in way that it does not have onboard pilot. Generally, the pilot in a UAV controls the motion from the ground through a transmitter to take care of the stability and trajectory motion of the drone. Applications are often focused on the military areas, cinematography, surveillance, inspection of transmission lines and power distribution; low cost filming and panoramic picturing for the movie industry, sport events, crop and herd monitoring, among others. There are different types of copters ranging from dualcopter, tricopter, quadcopter, hexacopter and octacopter. With regards to this project, quadcopter is the essential one. The quadcopter is a popular drone because of its unique properties.The major advantage of the quadcopter is its ability to hover, and its Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) capabilities. This allows the quadcopter to be operated in nearly any environment. A conventional helicopter with one main rotor and one tail rotor possesses many of the same properties as quadcopter. However, the quadcopter has no moving parts except for the rotating motors and propellers, while the conventional helicopter requires a complex hub to make it possible to rotate the motor axis to induce a translating motion. The quadcopter is also less prone to vibrations and it is more flexible when it comes to the placement of the center of gravity. Due to smaller size of rotors, they can be more easily covered, making it safer to fly indoors. The typical quadcopter design has no moving parts except for the propellers. The motors and their propellers are mounted to the frame and the only way to induce a lateral motion is to tilt the entire frame. Unlike a conventional helicopter, the quadcopter does not have a tail rotor to control the yaw motion. The quadcopter has four motors where two spins clockwise and two spins counterclockwise. If the pair of clockwise motors are spinning at a different rate than the pair of counterclockwise motors, it will create a moment about the yaw axis. II. MATERIALS AND METHOD Equipment and Materials