Airbus Group and Local Motors invite you to be a design hero and contribute to save lives.
Following the launch of its first joint pilot project for the co-creation of the next generation of commercial drones, Airbus Group and Local Motors have officially kicked off the 'Cargo drone challenge', an open competition to identify and design a premium drone solution to transport quickly urgent medical supplies to people and places that are traditionally difficult to reach.
The starting design of this competition would be Airbus Quadcruiser’s hybrid concept, combining the VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) and hovering capabilities of the well-known quad-copter design with the speed and cruise efficiency of a fixed-wing aircraft by using an additional pusher motor.
The top selected projects will then be reviewed before potentially becoming part of an industrial program. Attractive incentives will be awarded along with many opportunities for the top winners.
To learn more about the challenge, required drone features and possible business cases, visit The Challenge Website
Comments
Although not as unique as they say, these guys should easily be able to do it: https://localmotors.com/jsada/dronetechuav-pelican-av-2/
If what they claim is true, that is. Will be interesting to see if they ultimately do compete, though, given the required "Agreement".
Also: " The Community Member warrants that he does not submit any Idea which he has already offered, licensed, sold, commercialized, transferred or assigned to other entities or individuals. In particular, the Idea must not have been previously entered in any other commercial competition or challenge where its entry would provide such challenge or other entity any legal claim or right to the Idea."
Seems to pretty much rule out any aircraft that has a tie to any sort of commercial endeavor.
Now if CanberraUAV or some of the PX4 guys decided to enter ...
The wing loading will be off the charts unless its big. I have meant to sit down and work out what size machine could make the 3kg payload but can't be asked because I know it will be huge. My extended wing XUAV Talon might almost do it but not once I have to lift the quad as well. Also it would be more possible at sea level but not at 5000'and 30C as it is most days where I live.
Yeah, so silly.
On Friday I did the first test flight of my new Procyon electric helicopter. I'm flying with 1kg ballast/payload to start with. I have 40 Amp-hours of battery on board. It hover on 60-70A, but that drops to 40-50A when flying at 15 m/s. And that is the very first test flight. I'm just getting started. Lots of room for improvement, so you do the math. :)
And carrying 2.5kg will require almost no extra power.
To fly 100 km with 2.5kg on a gasser would be so trivial, it's not even worth discussing.
And particularly because they are talking about flying hospital to hospital, landing on the heli pad presumably... nobody can make a safety argument.
And yes, this contest is very much like so many Photo/Video contests. A cheap way for companies to harvest IP from unsuspecting people. I don't really understand how the whole thing is supposed to work. You have the possibility of winning $50k. But the aircraft required to complete the challenge will cost $50k+ to build, and then you give away what could be some very valuable IP. So maybe, if you win, you cover your costs.
I don't think this will be accomplished with a couple motors strapped to a cheap foamy. The range requirements are hard enough to achieve with an electric aircraft, requiring a very high mass-fraction of battery load. There's not much extra room for payload mass-fraction. So the airframe will have to be massive.
You can always enter the T3 and keep your IP ;-) Perhaps if the winner happens to use Ardupilot code developed by folks from around here they might consider donating some of the prize money to the devs. They couldn't honestly claim to have done the heavy lifting.
In this Agreement each winner (the “Winner”) grants Local Motors the non-limited, non-revocable, exclusive, transferable and assignable royalty-free right, free of costs and charges to use the Idea or work without restriction on content, time and place in any known or unknown way, including but not limited to publishing, copying, modifying, distributing, adapting and spread the Idea for any further development, modification or commercial exploitation. In this context, Winner grants Local Motor in particular the right to the registration of the Idea such as a trademark, patent, utility model or a design right in all national, European and international registers (DPMA , EUIPO, EPO, WIPO et al.). "
$50K for that degree of control and ownerships of the intellectual property is just outright theft
This has been discussed at length in the dev group and the specs are way out of whack, simple for a helicopter but very tricky for the STL platform that they want. Tricky because of the weight of the payload. Its going to have to be a big STL to achieve their goals. Or it could have been a much smaller helicopter that you could buy today! Quite cool that we are already running this competition here (sort of) without the restrictions or glittering prize ;-) http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/t3-the-vertical-one We can also thank Tridge, Canberra UAV, and the dev team for making a STL work out the box with Arudpilot in a Pixhawk. http://ardupilot.org/plane/docs/quadplane-support.html
So Ardupilot is ahead of Airbus ;-)
In this Agreement each winner (the “Winner”) grants Local Motors the non-limited, non-revocable, exclusive, transferable and assignable royalty-free right, free of costs and charges to use the Idea or work without restriction on content, time and place in any known or unknown way, including but not limited to publishing, copying, modifying, distributing, adapting and spread the Idea for any further development, modification or commercial exploitation. In this context, Winner grants Local Motor in particular the right to the registration of the Idea such as a trademark, patent, utility model or a design right in all national, European and international registers (DPMA , EUIPO, EPO, WIPO et al.). ".
Is it true ? If it is then it is highly unfair.
Looks like an easy $50K going into Mark's pocket. Still many more awards to be won for alternate solutions!
A challenge that I quickly concluded would be serviced by an off the shelf 800 Size gasser no problem.