Oh no! a newby college student asking questions! I know how frustrating it can be to have someone join the forums and say "here's my project... tell me how I can do it". So I just have a couple questions I would like to ask those that have more experience about quads than I do. My team would like to make a drone that would have autonomous flight capabilities, and be able to send a live video feed to a ground station up to 5 miles away. We decided we wanted to build a helicopter of some sorts; because none of us have ever built a helicopter. After doing some research, it seems like the most practical thing for us to build would be a quad-rotor. We made this decision based on some RC enthusiasts saying it's easier to fly, and autopilot devices can be found relatively inexpensively. So my first question is: "Is this true? -- would a quad-rotor be a good starting point for those new to rotor craft to begin?" secondly... "how hard is it to make them autonomous?" I have researched the ArduPilotMega and it seems great, but I've seen both sides through videos... some guys who built custom drones using the ArduCoptor or AeroQuad seemed to do great -- some of them were so aerobatic they could do flips... but other people created a drone that after 3 sec. in the air, it flipped over and shattered into a million pieces, and then my last question (for now) "I would believe that a quad-rotor would not be an inherently good platform for an endurance vehicle... my team would like to create a vehicle capable of an hour-long flight, but after reading through some forum posts -- it doesn't look like it's possible unless you move to say... a fuel cell or something -- so what is the typical flight time on your quads?" Thanks for help guys!
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I would start with the mission and see which craft can deliver what you want.
Quads are far more difficult to make autonomous. They are inherently ground seeking, self destruction machines. They leave little to no margin for error.
Planes like a SkyWalker will do what you want easily. But I would reconsider the range requirements for video. That seems a stretch. I keep telling people to google "Trappy" he has it all figured out.
1 hour flight time on a quad or helicopter is a TALL order. Endurance is much easier with a plane.
Quad rotors are good for those new to rotorcraft for 2 reasons IMHO. First, the control system is purely electronic. A conventional helicopter requires lots of mechanical bits whirling around at high RPM. There is a bit of a learning curve just to deal with that. Second, for a given lifting capacity the four propellers are less likely to do bodily harm or property damage than a single large rotor spinning at 2000 to 3000 rpm if something goes wrong. Of course both can be dangerous...
Replies
I would start with the mission and see which craft can deliver what you want.
Quads are far more difficult to make autonomous. They are inherently ground seeking, self destruction machines. They leave little to no margin for error.
Planes like a SkyWalker will do what you want easily. But I would reconsider the range requirements for video. That seems a stretch. I keep telling people to google "Trappy" he has it all figured out.
Quad rotors are good for those new to rotorcraft for 2 reasons IMHO. First, the control system is purely electronic. A conventional helicopter requires lots of mechanical bits whirling around at high RPM. There is a bit of a learning curve just to deal with that. Second, for a given lifting capacity the four propellers are less likely to do bodily harm or property damage than a single large rotor spinning at 2000 to 3000 rpm if something goes wrong. Of course both can be dangerous...