The quadcopter drone is a very popular design for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It consists of a flight controller and four electronic speed controllers (ESCs), one for each motor. The flight controller is equipped with a radio to receive flight commands provided by the pilot and the inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU provides information (such as velocity and orientation) that are necessary for autonomous stabilization of the vehicle, using the internal accelerometer, gyroscope, and sometimes the magnetometer and GPS receiver. This reference design combines four separate ESC boards into one controlled by with a single Kinetis® KV4x or Kinetis KV5x MCU, and it's capable of driving four BLDC motors. Each inverter in this solution is also enhanced with an GD3000 pre-driver that is capable of driving only N-channel MOSFETs for better efficiency.
