A multi-rotor will ccurrently only give you 10-15 mins flight time with a payload. There are cheaper options (than the OP) that are also more practical.
This is a really novel design.. few moving parts, and solves the main issue with multirotor drones.. namely that they are incredibly inefficient in terms of power required to fly.
When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient.
This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".
If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.
True, but my ~$120 quadcopter has about 80% of the power this thing needs to climb to 3m. There are people out there building human carrying scaled-up hobby quadcopters (well, hexa or duodec or hexadec copters).
I suspect there are (other) people out there now thinking things along the lines on "Hmmm, made from balsa and foam covered in poly film, prepreg carbon tube, kevlar tow, epoxy and cyano. All pretty common high-end but regularly homebuilt model plane techniques. 10m long rotor blades are big - but only 2 or 3 times longer than pretty common competition rc glider wings. There's a very reasonable chance that the right group of comp rc glider builders and quad rotor hobbyists could build something that weighs maybe only twice what this does, and has 5 or 10 times as much power available - probably for a budget of not much more that $10k."
I don't think "hardcore hobbyists" will be pedaling one of these anytime soon, but flying something similar electrically is certainly not an impossibility.
So you need roughly 100 grams of payload + probably another 100 or so grams of mounting gear (gimbals, etc.) + directional propellers + battery packs which likely total out at around a kilogram. So that's roughly a 1.2 meter diameter balloon or 950 liters. That's fairly large, I agree.
Do you know if a hybrid has been done where you have a multi-rotor assisted by TLA ballast?
That looks like the next earthroamer RV chassis :-). A number of folks have said to me that quad/hexcopters dont scale up to man capable sizes, this seems to contradict that. I can imagine the engine out scenarios will be challenging.
Considering the size of these, and their incredibly light weight design, that's probably a bit unlikely. With current technology, they are not capable of carrying much of a payload.
It's great research, and very cool design (both mechanically, as well as the driving software), but frankly, these types of flying mechanisms just don't scale well and don't have much use. (But please don't take that of a criticism of their research, I think what they've done is awesome and I really look forward to see what they do next.)
I don't know how much bigger that payload will be. Assuming the components to turn it into a UAV weigh 0 lbs, you're talking about a ~160 lb pilot in a 26,000 lb jet.
Heaviside is impressive. One of the most elegant eVTOL aircraft I've seen so far. Looks efficient, taking a lot of cues from sailplanes instead of just slapping together a quadcopter with some wing surfaces (or slapping some clunky lifting pods onto an airplane).
I think it's a feasible design. Hopefully they actually start flying it crewed and scale it up to at least 4 seats. If they can execute, I can believe it'd be significantly cheaper to operate than a helicopter.
Ecomax helicopter is about the same size (10m rotor dia), is targeting similar flight time (40+20mins) and payload (600lbs). So not obvious how much the difference between single vs multi rotor is significant here.
Not just the power to keep it up, but also the rotors. Not sure how heavy Earth quadcopter rotors are as a proportion of total vehicle weight, but the Ingenuity ones are absolutely enormous.
Those drones are perfectly able to lift a couple of pounds according to their specs. The other reason you mentioned about not wanting to customize it is more likely.
A similar concept has worked well for drones.[1] That's an electric quadrotor VTOL with wings. It transitions to a fuel-powered prop for ranges in hundreds of kilometers. The two-blade electric props stop pointed fore and aft when in fixed-wing mode, for minimal air resistance. There are multiple manufacturers of such aircraft.
NASA has been trying out variations on this theme.[2] Package delivery up to 25Kg or so should work. Human-carrying designs are possible but may not be practical.
Can't you build an array of smaller (say brushless DC motor) propellers to achieve the same thing? I could have sworn I saw a guy on Youtube do that and hover around his backyard in a home-made frankendrone comprised of a ton of props
(Though I'm not aware of any homebuilt multi rotors up in the 485lb plus a ~170lb pilot range. Yet.)
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