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Arcturus Jump - Piccolo autopilot using Latitude Engineering’s Hybrid-Quadrotor technology

Posted by Dennis Okeefe on April 24, 2014 at 8:30am

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Is any work being done by the development team to add this class of vehicle to the capabilities of the APM or Pixhawk series of autopilots?   The Arcturus design is very nice and looks like a very useful cross between Multi-rotor and normal aircraft designs.

here is a link to their site - http://arcturus-uav.com/index.html

dennis

Tags: arcturus, design, jumpjet
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  • Moderator
    Gary Mortimer April 25, 2014 at 2:57pm

    For me six hours is the new 40 minutes, we all used to think 40 minutes was ages now much much longer seems very possible with  hobby grade platforms, take a bit of work but possible. If you are flying for six hours VTOL is close to pointless, unless you are flying from a small boat.

    I don't think the Jump uses the quad part to come into the hover during a mission.

    This one does though

    Multirotors are in fashion at the minute but they have been around for much longer than folks think and most of the uses that pop up now have been thought about tried and disguarded.

  • hal April 25, 2014 at 2:57pm

    Why reinvent?  The Airforce came up with a good solution already, and it was pictured in this thread.  Figuring out how to mount the two motors coaxial on the front of the frame is all that is needed.  The rest would run on airplane programming.  Ailerons and elevators can and will do all the roll/pitch changing so there isn't any multi rotor specific programming to do.  Instead of making it a + style you could tailor it more for forward flight by lengthening the wings, and just keeping the rudder symmetrical so it minimizes the roll coupling when its used.  The only difference in programming would be how to hand off the altitude control from motor thrust to pitch/airspeed.  And it would probably be very model specific.  Both motors would be used for forward flight.  You could even go push me pull me with one up front, and one towards the back. If the one of them had a folding prop on it then you could operate on just one forward flight motor, and it could be optimized for forward flight prop pitches, and the other one with the folder could be optimized for hover.  Both motors do not need to lift the same weight, they just need to lift he aircraft as a sum of the thrust since the would be on centerline.  The accelerometers and some type of attitude hold like the AS3X blade planes would keep it super stable.

  • Jolyon Saunders April 25, 2014 at 2:38pm

    Rob I couldn't agree more about trad helis. I recently went from helis to VTOL and straight back again :) helis just rock my socks.

  • Moderator
    Gary Mortimer April 25, 2014 at 2:05pm

    I'm glad you mentioned traditional heli's Rob I think they are always going to beat these hybrids hands down. Its fun to try and make weird stuff fly but beyond that once you actually start wanting to work they make little sense. @Gil Thunderbird 2 was always my favourite. FAB.

  • Gil Rosenthal April 25, 2014 at 12:09pm

    Hi Rob,

    You are right, I just wasn't thinking in that direction :-)

    Saw you 'round at the pub during the last couple of years,

    just never got to the personal interests level :-)

  • Rob_Lefebvre April 25, 2014 at 11:06am

    Gil, I guess you don't know me well enough if you don't know what I was hinting at. ;)  Drum roll please....

    e.jpg

    Or higher end:

    Radikal-Condor.jpg

    Remember, they look complicated, but this is very mature and reliable technology.  I've flown my heli as a 700 electric, but it's currently 600 size. With Arducopter.  Benefits from all the same functionality as a multirotor. My 600 lifts a Nex5 on a 3-axis gimbal no trouble at all.  I'll be testing flight duration probably this weekend, hoping for 20 minutes.  Could probably do 30 with another set of batteries. It still has bags of power. 

    Gas duration starts at 30 minutes and just goes up from there.  Nobody has put a Pixhawk or APM on a gas heli yet, but I'm working towards that.  Hoping to do it this summer.  Just trying to put together the funding.

  • Dennis Okeefe April 25, 2014 at 10:39am

    i am curious why you guys decided you needed the winglets also?   

    dennis

  • Gil Rosenthal April 25, 2014 at 10:19am

    Hi BirdsEyeView Aerobotics!

    Honor to have you drop in :-)

    I for one saw that fantastic 30-min clip - fantastic - I am a fan!

    1. Let me know when you achieve the carrying capacity for a special 2-axis + 5 Sony NEX7 rig.

        Have cash, will travel :-)

    2. As homage, here is part of my personal sketch mashup, and i now included the FireFLY6!

        Is there a specific reason you guys chose to have the wing sweeping back so far?

    3701719252?profile=original

  • Gil Rosenthal April 25, 2014 at 10:02am

    ... What if I told you that you can get an off-the-shelf solution for about $2-3000.  It's very mature technology. You have several choices of manufacturers. They can fly for 2 hours easily, at up to 100 km/h.  It has excellent VTOL capability, and can hover in almost any wind condition.  It can lift up to 20lbs if you want to, but typically would limit to 5-10lbs if you want to achieve the flight duration I mentioned previously.  They weigh only about 15lbs, and are only 1.5m long, and 15cm wide.  This is available *today*.

    Hey Rob, A reference could be useful. Yo weren't by chance referring to THIS well proven technology? :-|)

    3701719285?profile=original

  • Dennis Okeefe April 25, 2014 at 8:49am

    rob...

    well, just buying them would take most of the fun out of this wouldn't it?  can you post the sources of some of these solutions since that is what i really need for the SAR effort instead of some half baked in work development vehicle.

    thanks ahead of time.

    dennis

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