The difference between Single Rotor drone and Helicopter

When it comes to UAV, the picture of quadcopter strikes everyone, but is that only the quadcopter reliable? Gens ACE- 3s 1300mah lipo, specialized in providing the battery for UAV and RC model and seeing numerous UAVs, will introduce you a new and novel air vehicle! Recently, foreign press reported that American researchers created a UAV with only one rotor. This UAV adopt the asymmetrical design, and more importantly, the only part of it which could move is a single propeller.
This UAV is called single channel rotor aircraft. The whole aircraft is controlled by a simple propeller, with a propeller that can move and without flap, hinge, aileron and even other actuator and controller. Although its mechanically design is simple, the electronic programming is advanced which is precise enough to travel in the air stably.

Do you think there is no difference between it and one-rotor helicopter?

No, they are considerably different.
In the field of UAVs, the most common aircrafts are divided into fixed-wing, helicopter and multi-rotors (the mainstream in the multi-rotors is quadcopter.). This aircraft is transform the multi-rotors into single-rotor, which has huge difference from helicopter.
A few years ago, helicopter and fixed-wing just take the most part of UAVs, almost no multi-rotors. However, the release of DJI Phantom broke this dominance. One of the most important reasons is that Phantom dramatically reduce the difficulty and cost of aerial photo. It is applauded by the market and become the best-seller product so far. In the following two years, the originality and design of multi-rotor aircraft come out endlessly.
Another crucial reason is that the reliability of the machine is considerable, which is also the main difference between multi-rotors and helicopters.
Compared with the multi-rotors UAVs, the helicopter should consist of thousands of movable machinery parts. The abrasion, during the fight, causes the reliability decline. Not to mention the high cost of trouble-shooting of such unstable elements, threatening the people's health is possible. Conversely, there is no movable components on the multi-rotors. Its reliability depends on the reliability of the brushless motor, so the reliability is high. The helicopter has more complex structure and more movable machinery parts.

Besides, helicopters usually need stroke oar and a pair of rotor, towards opposite direction, to keep the balance, and the single-rotor UVAs, however, need only one rotor, which adopt the asymmetrical and unbalanced body design to ensure the flight and the controllability. Actually, tens of years ago, the aircraft operated by skilled pilots included only two movable components-the rotor and rudder. The "single channel rotor aircraft" proved that only one movable part for the remote aircraft is enough. However, compared with the helicopter and quadcopter, the calculation programming of the "single channel rotor aircraft" is much more simple. In other words, to let it launch, we should apply the correct method, and the success rate depends on the manual operation. What is more, its sensitivity of operation is comparatively weak. Because when it launches, it has to rotate continuously to keep balance, it is not competent for aerial photograph and other tasks.
Although there are many sorts of UAVs, the battery is vital. Gens ACE-14.8v lipo battery, specialized in providing the battery for UAV and RC model for many years, is worth being recommended.
Source: http://www.genstattu.com/blog/the-difference-between-single-rotor-drone-and-helicopter/