We've spent the past two years developing a new UAV design to advance commercial applications. In a nutshell, our design, The Vectorotor, pivots the rotors instead of shifting the frame to move:
There are many applications for this design, but we believe our first push should be automating rope access work. Jobs like high rise window washing, inspection that involves physical contact, and high reach painting are performed with rope access workers. The maneuverability and precision brought on by this design make it much easier to develop these applications. Using drones to perform these tasks could drastically reduce costs, make the job safer, and in some cases faster. More can be seen in our press release: http://www.mirplatforms.com/news/mir-is-launching-a-new-uav-design-to-automate-rope-access-work/
We currently have a flying prototype that we are testing with a customer and more on our journey can be seen here: http://www.mirplatforms.com/timeline/
We are a company that builds drone hardware and we are looking to partner with companies to develop applications. If you or anyone you know is interested please feel free to reach out to me! nikita@mirplatforms.com
Comments
Cool idea, however that pivoting 2 DoF arm seems a bit heavy to me. How much added weight will this bring to the vehicle?
Thanks, we have some exciting stuff planned and I'll keep DIYdrones posted
Ah I see, so if the body is tilted perpendicular to the ground you can still have all 8 motors oriented vertically. Well best of luck with the project, keep posting whenever you do some flights with a payload or something exciting.
They have a great project. We are both aiming to be 6 DoF aircraft, but are achieving it in different ways. Our main difference from their project is having the propellers move with 2 DoF as seen here:
This may seem like a small difference, but it allows for some unique capabilities.
This is reminiscent of the Voliro hexacopter from ETH Zurich.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgd0i87r9-0
Does the Vectorrotor have the same range of motion or am I looking at it wrong and it's designed for a totally different use case?
You're right! Just made the edit, thanks
Should that be "nikita@" instead of "niktia@"?