# How a Drone Works

How a drone's propellers, motors, battery, sensors and flight controller work together to lift off and fly forward\.

By Danfake

Topic: Machines

[Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/Q19yIadnjgw8)

## Transcript

### 1. Meet the flying robot

A drone is a flying robot\. Inside its little plastic shell, parts work together like a body: muscles to move, eyes to see and a brain to decide\. Let's peek inside\!

A small drone like this weighs about 250 grams, about as much as two apples\.

### 2. Propellers: the air pushers

The four propellers are spinning wings\. Each one pushes air down, and the air pushes the drone up\! Two spin one way and two spin the other way, so the drone does not twirl like a top\.

The faint streaks show where the propellers push the air\.

### 3. Motors: the muscles

Under each propeller is a motor, one of the drone's four muscles\. Magnets and coils of copper wire inside push and pull to make it spin thousands of times every minute\.

Spin faster and the propeller pushes harder\.

### 4. Battery: the lunch box

The battery is the drone's lunch box\. It stores the energy that every other part uses\. It is the heaviest single part, about a third of the whole drone\!

When the battery runs low, the drone has to land\. Small drones fly for about half an hour at most\.

### 5. Sensors: eyes and balance

The camera at the front is the drone's eyes\. Sensors underneath watch the ground, and a tiny chip feels every tilt and wobble, just like your inner ear helps you balance\.

### 6. The tiny computer brain

This little circuit board is the flight controller: the drone's brain\. Hundreds of times every second, it reads the sensors and tells each motor to spin a bit faster or slower\.

Without its brain, a drone would wobble and tumble\.

### 7. All together: take off\!

Press Take off\! The brain spins all four motors faster until the push is stronger than the drone's weight, and up it goes\. To fly forward, the back motors spin faster so the drone leans and zooms ahead\.

### 8. Your turn to wonder

Muscles, eyes, a lunch box and a brain: a drone is a team of parts working together\. If you built your own flying robot, what job would you give it, and what would you name it?