Would a Pixhawk be able to run a tilted rotor hexacopter, like CyPhy LVL 1?

Posted by Dale Greer on October 19, 2015 at 12:52pm

CyPhy is developing a hexacopter with tilted rotors, tilted but in a fixed position:

http://www.cyphyworks.com/robots/lvl1/

This enables the LVL1 to move without tilting, so it's always level.

My question is, does a Pixhawk care about the orientation of rotors? Or would this design require a lot of Pixhawk software development?

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Tags: cyphy, pixhawx, rotor, tilted
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Replies

  • Steven Adams October 20, 2015 at 10:01am

    here is a great post on one guy who independently did this on TauLabs 

    http://buildandcrash.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/tau-labs-and-cyphy-lev...

    • Dale Greer > Steven Adams October 20, 2015 at 9:42pm

      That's pretty cool, thanks! But now I'm not so sure about the advantages. Seems like you still need separate camera stabilization if it's windy.

  • Justin October 19, 2015 at 5:44pm
    Out of curiosity, what sparked your interest in a tilted hex? When a multicopter is in forward motion, they tend to pitch down and can screw up video/photo(I get that) Tilted motors are able to compensate for that but in the multi you're looking at, looks like the camera angle Is adjustable. Therefore, I'm not understanding the attraction for tilt. Please help me understand? Seems like a gimmick.
    • Dale Greer > Justin October 19, 2015 at 7:59pm

      Not sure if I understand your question. Cameras with gimbals feature user control over the pitch of the camera. The gimbal then holds this pitch, and camera roll, steady as the drone pitches and rolls. With tilted rotors taking care of motion over the ground plane, a drone wouldn't need a gimbal because it wouldn't be pitching and rolling, but it would still need user control over camera pitch.

      A tilted rotor drone would be superior for aerial surveying, since a bottom mounted camera would remain pointing straight down throughout the pattern. I'm not sure if the LVL1 and its camera would be suitable for surveying though. With a bottom mounted camera, at the least it would need legs of course, and it's not clear that it would be able to carry a multispectral array.

      It's also not clear that it could be programmed in a lawnmower pattern suitable for surveying, which is why I'm wondering if a Pixhawk could be used to control a tilted rotor multicopter.

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