A brief look at quadcopters

I’ve had a little look on Thingiverse to see what sort of designs people are using for home-made UAVs.  My UAV will be a quadcopter with a frame around the edge, and so that was the type of design I concentrated on.  For some reason my results don’t format correctly, but you can get the idea:

There seems to be a breed of quadcopter that has a thing flexible plastic edge, I guess to help it “bounce back” from impacts:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:602903

 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:241690

There’s also some that simply have buffers around the edges of the rotors:
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:21121

And then those that have a full, solid frame (although nowhere near as bulky as the one I intend to build):
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:22537

 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:392338

 http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34030

I think the lack of bulk seen on these quadcopters is a speed issue.  My UAV will not be very fast/aerodynamic most likely, but it does not need to be for the intended application.