11–20 of 84 posts
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
This is so clever! Turning mechanical control problems into informational control problems is critical to the ubiquity of micro air vehicles.
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
Now if we could just start printing these parts at home...
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
This means either including a crankshaft and optionally a system of gears to route the rotational power along the axes you want the rotation in, or ducting the output of a jet turbine in some way that drives the rotors. In addition, there are different limitations with regards to the time required for a given change in RPM as compared to an electrical motor.
My impression is that a lot of the complexity in conventional helicopters (and flying machines in general) stems from the limitations of combustion engines. There's a reason that you very rarely see vectored thrust in conventional airplanes, for example.
Of course, if batteries and electric motors become sufficiently powerful, this changes the dynamic and it will become possible to design electric aircraft that re-evaluate the traditional design restrictions. This is one of the reasons that the rapid progress of electric cars is so exciting.
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
With full sized helis, it takes a long time to spin up the rotors to speed before the pitch is changed to take off.
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
Now if we could just start printing these parts at home...
These other components look printable too. Right now I am making 3D printable robots that don't need any non-printed parts aside from motors, bearings, and drive belts (and batteries and electronics).
So these definitely should be printable at home.
This thing is so nimble in the air yet has a fraction of the complexity of a regular helicopter. I wonder if this method will scale up to "full size"?
Probably not, for the same reason that a quadcopter doesn't really scale to full size. The inertia effects of larger rotors make changing the speed of the rotors within a rotation much harder. With full sized helis, it takes a long time to spin up the rotors to speed before the pitch is changed to take off.
I don't see a specific reason why this wouldn't scale. I do wonder what changes in load do to the system though. If it can't handle changing loads without messing up the blade dynamics, it would only work for fixed payload systems like camera platforms.