Patent ID: 8725314

Claim:
A method of synchronously controlling a plurality of electric motors for a remote-controlled rotary wing drone such as a quadricopter, each motor being controlled by a microcontroller and the set of microcontrollers being driven by a central controller, wherein each microcontroller is coupled to the central controller by a respective, specific UART serial communications link over a separate line extending between the central controller and the respective microcontroller, wherein said method comprises: a preliminary step comprising allocating a software address parameter to each microcontroller; and in operation, at least a control step comprising: by the central controller, sending simultaneously on each link line a message containing at least one instruction specified by the software address parameter of a destination microcontroller that is to execute said instruction; and by each destination microcontroller, extracting the instruction addressed thereto from said message, and executing it; wherein the preliminary step of allocating a software address parameter includes, successively for each of the microcontrollers: by the central controller: selectively inhibiting communications on the lines between the central controller and the microcontrollers other than the destination controller; and sending to the destination microcontroller, on the line extending between the central controller and the destination microcontroller, an address allocation message including the software address parameter; and by the destination microcontroller: receiving the address allocation message and storing the software address parameter included therein.