Our copter, when finished, should be very similar in nature to Old Man Mike’s 1000mm quad, as it uses the same props, motors, and similar rotor spacing. Instead of thermal sensing however, we’ll be using a custom inertial controller providing three axis of accelerometer, gyro, and magnetometer sensing, centered around a cortex-m3 ARM processor. The ultimate goal for our quadcopter is for it to be stable enough to allow the XBC, an old Botball controller featuring FPGA-powered onboard vision, to fly the copter autonomously and track or follow things on the ground, as well as in the future more traditional GPS waypoint following.
Here’s a few posts that go in to more detail about our planning, design, and construction process:
Check out http://aeroquad.com , the quadcopters there can give you guys some inspiration. Try mounting your sensors on a few layers of double sided tape to reduce motor vibrations affecting your readings.