Eli5 why do drones have four blades and helicopters only have one?
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It boils down to drones having electric motors while helicopters have an internal combustion engine. The helicopter’s engine can only go at very high RPMs (revolutions per minute), so you need a transmission system to reduce those RPMs for the blade. You can’t really afford having four independent transmissions in a helicopter. A quadcopter has four independent electric motors which can turn at whatever speed required and so are connected directly to the rotors without any transmission. This makes for relatively easy control of flight by changing the speeds of different motors to move in the desired direction. A helicopter has another complicated system for adjusting the angle of the blade instead. Helicopter-size vehicles can’t yet be powered by electric motors because of battery size and weight limitations, but once we get there, helicopters will likely have four rotors too.
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