4 ms·
To be fair, people were doing a LOT with model airplanes ~60 years ago with kerosene engines.
by urthor 6y ago
To be fair, people were doing a LOT with model airplanes ~60 years ago with kerosene engines.
- spookthesunset 6y agoI don’t think modern quads would be possible with combustion engines. They aren’t precise and responsive enough. Modern brushless motors paired with some pretty kickass electronic speed controllers and flight controllers create a pretty amazing thing. I mean modern quads can fly in “3D” mode and almost instantly reverse the direction of all the motors so the quad can fly in all orientations, right side up and upside down.
- gpm 6y agoHave the combustion engine drive a generator not the props, it's still more energy dense (but only scales so small).
- crubier 6y agoKeep in mind that there are exactly a grand total of 4 moving parts in a quadrotor drone. This is the core reason for their success, robustness, ease of use and all. If all quadrotors needed oil, gas, vibrated like crazy (bad for IMUs), had 100+ moving parts (engine, servo gears, etc...), weighted at least 1-2kg, ran super hot and noisy... we would not have had the "drone revolution".
- jpalomaki 6y agoI guess it's not just about the energy density, but also about how quickly you can convert the stored energy to kinetic energy. Maybe this is something where the modern batteries are much better and combustion engine/generator combo. Parent comment mentions being able to get 2000W out of those small batteries.
- jjk166 6y agoCombustion engines have much higher power densities than batteries