Flying Sphere! Saw this on slashdot, anyone want to give it a try?

I have been toying with doing a similar project for a while, and stumbled upon this site while doing some basic research. I have limited experience with R/C planes but have done a lot of robot construction (Combat robots in particular), am decent at CAD, and have been a programmer for 35 years.

I've been doing some thinking about the apparent spherebot design and I think some significant simplifications can be made to it:

1) Use an egg-shaped cage so that the device tends to self-right a bit more easily; also, it will require less structural materials.

2) Put as much of the mass as low as possible in the device, both to help with self-righting and to improve the static stability in-flight.

3) The spherebot is supposed to have 8 servo'd vanes, but it is unclear to me whether this is necessary (or in fact, true). AFAICT a combination of 4 fixed wings with large ailerons can provide all the needed control inputs.

4) If (3) is true, then hacking the Arducopter code to provide the control outputs ought to be relatively easy -- a first cut would just remap the 4 motor outputs into 4 servo + 1 thrust output.

5) This project is tailor-made for a custom CF frame, probably including some 3D-printed connectors. I'd love an excuse to play around with with the 3D stuff...

At this point, I would like to get some feedback as to whether my thinking above is reasonably correct. If so, then I'll need some advice as to the appropriate parts to design around.

OFC, the results of all of this would be shared back to the community.

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Imtiyaz July 10, 2012 at 10:38pm

Did you get any far?
Robert Woodhead August 31, 2011 at 4:50am

I have been toying with doing a similar project for a while, and stumbled upon this site while doing some basic research. I have limited experience with R/C planes but have done a lot of robot construction (Combat robots in particular), am decent at CAD, and have been a programmer for 35 years.

I've been doing some thinking about the apparent spherebot design and I think some significant simplifications can be made to it:

1) Use an egg-shaped cage so that the device tends to self-right a bit more easily; also, it will require less structural materials.

2) Put as much of the mass as low as possible in the device, both to help with self-righting and to improve the static stability in-flight.

3) The spherebot is supposed to have 8 servo'd vanes, but it is unclear to me whether this is necessary (or in fact, true). AFAICT a combination of 4 fixed wings with large ailerons can provide all the needed control inputs.

4) If (3) is true, then hacking the Arducopter code to provide the control outputs ought to be relatively easy -- a first cut would just remap the 4 motor outputs into 4 servo + 1 thrust output.

5) This project is tailor-made for a custom CF frame, probably including some 3D-printed connectors. I'd love an excuse to play around with with the 3D stuff...

At this point, I would like to get some feedback as to whether my thinking above is reasonably correct. If so, then I'll need some advice as to the appropriate parts to design around.

OFC, the results of all of this would be shared back to the community.
DougB July 19, 2011 at 12:46pm

Here's a video of it flying

Flying Sphere

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Flying Sphere! Saw this on slashdot, anyone want to give it a try?

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