Hi DIY Drones,
We are a senior design team at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and are passionate about demonstrating how unmanned aerial vehicles can be a vital tool for first responders. We have designed N.O.R.M., a UAV intended for emergency response professionals. Our team believes that in the near future, this technology will be helping first responders save more lives than ever before. In order to bring this vision to life we are running an Indiegogo campaign. You can learn more about our vision for this project by watching the short video below.
You can also learn more about our team and our experience with UAV related projects on our team Facebook page. If you are interested in this project please take a moment to check out our Indiegogo campaign and consider contributing. Also feel free to contact us with any questions. We would love to have your input and suggestions for our project.
Comments
Tail volume not necessarily to small but the boom length definitely is. You are certainly going to have problems with the folding wings and extending tail. It's not impossible to get done but it will certainly be difficult to implement.
You can help yourself out a lot by folding in the other direction at the middle and using the geometry to lock the wings in place. Move the pivot out and tuck them under the inner sections. Either way you're still going to need to find a way to get the shear loads off of those linear actuators. I would avoid a ribbed structure honestly, stress concentrations at those pivots will get very high.
John,
I agree with your points. We are working on finding a creative solution to lock the wings in place. This is a challenging mechanism to perfect and we appreciate all the feedback.
Eli,
Thank you for the reference material. We will compare our design with the guidelines that are outlined on that webpage and tweak the tail design accordingly.
from the render, the tail volume looks much too small in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. I've had this bookmarked for years to remind me of the formulae generally used here.
Off the top of my head you need some kind of CF rods that bolts into place in the joints to get decent strength and rigidity. But this is a typical example of how such things quickly gets tricky. To loose a fit and you get unwanted movement, and to tight and you risk having the mechanism lock up. You also have to consider external forces like wind causing unwanted drag and locking up the mechanism while you try to fold/unfold the wings etc.
Hey John,
We agree that this is going to be a tricky feature to implement, but we believe it adds a lot of value to the design. That's why we have decided to tackle this hurdle first in our project. We already have a functional prototype that shows promise and will be continuing to flush out the issues over the next few months. Any tips or suggestions for working with complex mechanisms such as this one are greatly appreciated!
Those folding wings are going to be an endless source of frustration as you progress towards a working solution.
Currently N.O.R.M. is the only UAV of its kind and we are intending to use it for research and demonstration purposes over the coming years, not mass production. If the FAA regulations regarding BVLOS operation were loosened and we were able to secure substantial investment we would definitely put together a plan for mass production because we believe this type of system can save a lot of lives. We are currently estimating the cost to produce a single vehicle w/ landing station at $15000 to $20000. Since the project is still in the development phase its hard to nail down a specific number. If we were to ever go into full scale production that number would invariably be subject to change.
So, um, what's the plan for producing these in quantity and what would a production unit cost?