Posted by Dror Caspi on October 4, 2010 at 10:00am
Not a DIY but an interesting drone concept... As far as I can see, it can take off, hover and land as a tricopter, and also swing its two forward props 90 degrees to fly as an airplane.
How complicated is the control for the 2-rotor VTOL you describe? And the in-out seems tricky. Seems to me a rear prop is a pragmatic solution to achieve less complexity
Rear prop is not needed at all if only they 1) counter rotate the wing props, 2) when swivelled up align those two props with the CG, 3) and have not only down/up angle control, but in/out as well. They are not taking advantage of propeller inertial effects or the unbalancable thrust torques (which align with the inertial forces when changing in/out angle). There are enough degrees of freedom in this method to control 3 axis attitude and motion. The in/out scissoring for VTOL mode couples to the pitch axis control, for which there are example 2-rotor VTOLs out there.
Yeah, I've been thinking of something along those lines myself as it would be some fun stuff to program the conversion from vertical to horizontal flight. Was thinking more of a large central lifting propeller with two thrusters that rotate 90 degrees and perhaps a delta wing...
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