The Parrot AR.Drone remote-controlled quadricopter recently landed on our teardown table.

What's cooler than one quadricopter? Two quadricopters, of course! The AR.Drone comes with two hulls: an indoor unit with guards over the propellers (grey/white) and an outdoor unit (orange/blue).

You might notice the lack of a controller with this awesome gadget. That's because the controls are managed via an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad by using AR.Free Flight, an application available for download in the Apple App Store.

Android users, can now enjoy the AR.Drone Android app from the Market!

Talk about repair-friendly; opening up the AR.Drone doesn't even require a screwdriver. (Compare this with some recent devices we have torn down!)

The hull is attached to the body by a pair of magnets; one in the hull and one on the body.

Much of the AR.Drone's body is made of expanded polypropylene (EPP), a common substance that is both extremely light and easily manufactured into complex shapes.

The 1000mAh 11.1V lithium polymer battery is attached via a connector, making it delightfully easy to remove.

The second connector is a balance charge connector, which ensures that each of the three battery cells is charging equally, thus optimizing capacity and prolonging battery life.

The battery contains a protection circuit module, which prevents it from discharging too rapidly, over charging, or short circuiting.

Parrot claims the battery will only last about 12 minutes after a full charge, which takes around 90 minutes. Taking your AR.Drone out to the park with only one battery won't get you much play time, unfortunately.

Next, we turn to the underside of the quadricopter.

After removing four T6 Torx screws, the lower plate can be lifted off to reveal the motherboard and navigation board.

The navigation board is connected to the motherboard by eight pins and comes out without any hassle.

The two large mesh cylinders make up the ultrasound altimeter, which stabilizes the quadricopter within 6 meters of the ground.

The back side of the navigation board contains the Microchip PIC24HJ16GP304 40MHZ 16-bit microprocessor.

The MEMS gyroscope, the Invensense IDG 500, is also found on this board.

Front of motherboard:

• Parrot 6 ARM9 468 MHz processor.
• ROCm Atheros AR6102G-BM2D b/g Wi-Fi module.
• Micron OGA17 D9HSJ
• Vertical camera.
• USB/serial port connector

On the back:

• Micron 29F1G08AAC

Each propeller assembly is made up of the propeller blade, gear, motor and motor controller board.

These are not your run-of-the-mill propellers. The design team behind these won a micro drone design contest put on by the French Army.

• The propellers spin in different directions depending on the side they are mounted on, and are marked either C (clockwise) or A (anti-clockwise).

The propeller blade and gear are held in place by a small circlip on a stainless steel shaft.

Parrot sells a special circlip removal tool, but we opted for a pick we had laying around the office.

These little guys can definitely go flying if you're not careful. Luckily, they come as part of two different replacement parts packages available directly from Parrot.