MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
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MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
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Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#2Interesting research. Assuming that the benefit of fixed-wing aircraft is efficiency in relatively straight flight, I'm wondering how this aircraft compares in efficiency vs agility against a quadcopter of similar weight.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#3I'm curious if it'd be harder for a soldier to spot a tailsitting drone high in the sky floating above doing surveillance.
They are already impossible to spot as it is at certain heights.
It would have to be right above them though.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#4Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#5Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
I'm pretty sure many of the new military designs (f-117) are inherently unstable without a machine to constantly adapt their control surfaces. this is just going all in.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#6Ah, tailsitters. Everyone loves the theory, then the practical realities of the takeoff position exposing the entire wing surface to the prevailing wind quickly kills real-world applications. I remember back during the 3D Robotics heyday watching Chris Anderson repeatedly run down to set his tailsitter upright, take a few steps back, only to watch it fall over again.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#7Ah, tailsitters. Everyone loves the theory, then the practical realities of the takeoff position exposing the entire wing surface to the prevailing wind quickly kills real-world applications. I remember back during the 3D Robotics heyday watching Chris Anderson repeatedly run down to set his tailsitter upright, take a few steps back, only to watch it fall over again.
For vertical takeoff and landing the wing surface is mostly irrelevant, right? Seems like if you gave the rotors a “landing configuration” where they rotated 90 degrees you could lay the wing flat on the ground.
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#8Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
I'm pretty sure many of the new military designs (f-117) are inherently unstable without a machine to constantly adapt their control surfaces. this is just going all in.
Fun fact: the F-117 had its first flight in 1981 and has already been retired from combat duty for nearly 15 years[0]. So “new” is perhaps not quite the right word to describe it.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#9Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
It’s definitely been done before.
The closest to this design off the top of my head would be the Lockhead XFV (1954): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV
The idea of a VTOL tailsitter, but without the single primary planar wing surface, goes much further back. The Nazis were in the process of building the Triebflügel at the end of WW2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Triebflügel
Re: MIT Tailsitter Drone Acrobatics
#10Do these designs scale up? Don’t see why we haven’t created full sized aircraft with this form factor. Seems like it would make a great aerial weapons platform.
Yes, though practicality to date has been limited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tail-sitter>