Came across this in the Science Museum London as a development by Manchester University. It looked like the motors are fixed at this angle - Why? Anyone suggest any benefits for this arrangement - faster yaw control? greater stability? more controllable?
Peter
Comments
from 2008 which seems to have three props angled down and three up.
Peter
"The Tumbleweed was designed by a team from Manchester University, led by Dr Bill Crowther, senior lecturer at the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering. He remarks:
'The idea is pretty new. This design only dates back around 10 months, and we only got a patent granted last week.
'The problem with existing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles is that they're fairly unmanoeuvreable, particularly close to the ground among buildings in gusty winds.
'Instead of having to turn and tilt in order to move - like a helicopter - the Tumbleweed remains level and relies on very rapid variations in power to each of the six propellers - so it can generate forces to move in any direction.
'It will fly but it will also roll along the ground which is a far more efficient way of moving, so we have longer endurance."
Peter
It was entered into an unmanned vehicles competition run by the UK Ministry of Defense, actually - some clever googling would probably turn up a little info, and maybe some clips of it in flight. I've seen it in action, and it's fairly cool.
V-Prop60 - Park Flight Test
I've seen similar designs - all essentially involving (seemingly) randomly oriented rotors/thrust mechanisms extending from an axis point.
Applications would involve sensors and payloads requiring 360 in xy&z; complex fluid or space borne operations, etc
In a quad, yaw motion is realized in the direction of the induced reactive torque; sideways motion - by rolling and increasing/decreasing the left/right rotor thrust. I think this hex does the opposite.
It has resulted in 905 comments.
Peter
so let's imagine that the confluence of the two streams is reasonably efficiently directed downward, certainly changing the relative rpm would change the effective thrust angle - so it might just be possible that this configuration is capable of navigating in 3d space WITHOUT changing its attitude.
It seems the neutral torque pairing algorithm for a steady attitude hex is interesting:
I notice that each arm contains two props with are aligned - let's assume that they are contra-rotating.
so if we assume stable flight, then lateral movement can be achieved by increasing thrust accross a pair of contra props in the desired axis.
We might achieve level flight by using torque differentials across each contra-pair according to its axis. That leaves yaw stability:
For this perhaps we group all left-oriented props into one group and all right-leaning props into another basket, and apply a Yaw feedback to each group accordingly - this would undoubtedly lead to leveling problems - but it might resolve to a solution.