The I-Spy and Locust teams are developing their own designs and have taken different approaches. I-Spy has a rotary-wing vehicle; Locust has a fixed-wing design with two small, custom-designed rotors and a novel airframe. Siddarth Odedra, University of Middlesex and a member of I-Spy, says they have experimented with helicopter-like designs and have settled on the slightly unusual option of a three-rotor design. Usually the quad-rotor craft is favoured because they are relatively stable and easy to control. "We want to bring innovation to it," says Odedra. "We bench-marked everything that is available and everything seems to be going down the quad-rotor path. But it is not always the most stable. We have three sets of rotors, each with two sets of counter-rotating blades. It gives more stability once the complex control has been worked out. "The ultimate thing we found out was that it gives better surviv-ability. Even if it loses a rotor or a set, it can still survive. That doesn't happen with a quad-rotor design."
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