Ok, it is not a paint roller. That is just what I thought when I first saw this. Personally, I find the concept interesting, and I can think of some unique uses, including as a remote control paint roller.
But, seriously, I wonder how much flight times might be improved if a "mission" was mostly rolled around on the ground, with only short hops over obstacles? I may have to contact my friend at BG and see if they could send me an evaluation model for some testing.
Check out the specs further here.
Comments
I'll be darned, I apparently commented on that video a few months ago. The idea seemed familiar, but I do not remember seeing that video, but apparently I did. Our youngest had just been born around that time. Sleep deprivation must have been taking its toll.
I was implying world's first when it came to paint rolling. A little joke. ;). I had not seen this video before. Very cool work indeed. My personal interest is in the use of UAVs in emergency operations. Something like this catches my eye because I envision it rolling through a post disaster area, hopping over obstacles as needed, and shooting skyward to take shots of a scene when needed. I may need to contact this young man.
Not exactly the "world's first." Saw this at a presentation several months ago, this was a student from IIT's Masters Thesis. He was studying friction coefficients and energy efficiency, and developed algorithms that would provide the fastest travel/least energy expenditure for waypoint navigation by either rolling or flying (rolling was around 3x less energy wasteful than flying).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbtkpYIbuCw
It's bang good, alright.