July 12, 2013 By
Imagine a quadcopter hovering above a payload – a can of beans, perhaps. The ‘copter descends onto the payload, activates an electromagnet, and flies away with a hobo’s dinner. Right now, this is a bit of an impossibility. A normal electromagnet that powerful would consume an amazing amount of power, something quads don’t usually have in abundance. With the OpenGrab project, the dream of a remote-controlled skycrane is within reach, thanks to some very clever applications of magnetics.
The tech behind the OpenGrab is an electro-permanent magnet, basically an electromagnet you can turn on and off, but doesn’t require any power to stay on. OpenGrab was heavily influenced by a PhD thesis aimed at using these devices for self-assembling buildings.
This project had a very successful Kickstarter campaign and has seen some great progress in the project. While beer doesn’t come in steel cans anymore, we can imagine a whole lot of really cool applications for this tech from infuriating electronic puzzles to some very cool remote sensing applications.
Filed under: hardware
Comments
does anyone have an update with a hands on review of this product? The Nicadrones website seems to be gone. I'm interested in how well this thing works. Great idea.
I was given a ship notice, but it's coming from South America so I'm guess 2+ weeks until it shows up.
Thought I'd commented on this already...?
I'm one of the backers, and anxiously awaiting my unit. I have visions of suspending it from a winch under the heli to be able to raise and lower payloads. Only question I have is how I would run the power and control down to the end of the winch line... I might be able to make a composite cable at work, a small steel wire, with 3 very small wires, covered with a jacket. But it would still make for a fat cable that would use a lot of space compared to a plain steel wire.
The black cylinder, I believe, is a really big and fast Capacitor. That is how it operates. It takes a lot of current to generate the field needed, but only for a short time. So the cap is charged slowly, and then when you activate it, it sends a pulse into the coil.
The question is what are these parts in this rendering,especially that black cylindrical rod ?
This is my guess at how they are doing it.
guessing it is a powerful magnet and the electromagnetic temporarily turns on producing an opposite pole which effectively cancels out the permanent magnet to drop things.
any idea when they will be available for purchase?
On a complete tangent:
if i had a peice of steel on an arm attached to an axle: ((-------o-------)) $
with the device mentioned at the $.
by pulsing the device could you make the arm spin? if your attracting each piece of steel as it approaches and letting it glide away, then you could get it to spin?
do u get where i'm going with this? how does that concur with thermodynamics? it is basicly a stepper motor, but using TLL levels instead of coils.
whats the catch?
I checked this out some time ago and it is a really good idea.
The most effective solution for our multicopters is simply to have the magnet far enough away from the compass and appropriately oriented so that it produces minimal interference.
Shielding is not as effective as you might hope because to be truly effective your shield (mu metal) really needs to fully encompass either the magnet or the compass and of course that would render which ever one was shielded operationally inert.
The only question is how far below your copters magnetometer would it have to be to work OK with the compass.
@nathaniel : says on the kickstarter page, "there where concerns that the magnetic field cause interference with the compass on a 3dr APM board. it turns out it is a problem so magnetic shielding has to be added a minor increase in complexity."
Me want one too :)
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