Ask HN: Why are quadcopters not flown like helicopters yet?

There are a lot of reasons, but one that comes to mind is that quadcopters can't autorotate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation_(helicopter)

Also batteries suck.

Thanks! How would the batteries of an helicopter and quadcopter differ?

Also on StackOverflow: http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/3300/why-havent-...

My understanding has it one issue is that a lot of the control-system benefits of the tiny quadcopter go away when you scale up and the blades have actual mass (so changing their speed is hard).