3 ms·

I can imagine something like this being very useful in situations that are complicated by the environment. For instance, in a setting like Chernobyl or Fukushi

I can imagine something like this being very useful in situations that are complicated by the environment. For instance, in a setting like Chernobyl or Fukushima. Or in a war-zone. I picture a Google Chauffeur (self-driving) truck, bringing supplies to the site (if possible), and quadcopters doing the final assembly. Push a button here, and a structure is assembled there, with no human intervention. And don't limit yourself to picturing these dog-sized toys. Picture giant, military-style helicopters, but quadcopters. I don't think there's anything in the physics that doesn't scale. A Chinook CH-47D can carry 26,000 pounds of payload externally.

krschultz 15y ago
I think you are absolutely right that this is only going to be used when other means fail. Why would anyone lift standard materials for a sky scraper with an aircraft when they can use a crane? But once you start doing construction the advantages of quadcopters (mainly control) starts to get outweighed by their inefficiency. Regular helicopters are far more efficient - large rotors are exactly what you want for heavy lifting. The strongest helicopter I know of is the CH-53E Super Stallion, and that is a single rotor aircraft (even though it has multiple engines).
- VikingCoder 15y ago
  I think 10,000 quadcopters might be able to do something really amazing. I'm back down to "dog-sized," and I'm back to small payloads. It's a design challenge to come up with useful atomic units that such a robot could lift, but the number of them that can operate independently is a serious factor. I'll recast this in terms I'm more familiar with: we used to scale software by getting faster CPUs with more powerful instructions. Now we're all being told to scale by numbers of CPUs. Can building construction be similarly recast? Your CH-53E Super Stallion is effectively scaling up. Can we instead use quadcopters to scale out?
  - nerdo 15y ago
    Like in Batteries Not Included?

krschultz 15y ago

I think you are absolutely right that this is only going to be used when other means fail. Why would anyone lift standard materials for a sky scraper with an aircraft when they can use a crane? But once you start doing construction the advantages of quadcopters (mainly control) starts to get outweighed by their inefficiency. Regular helicopters are far more efficient - large rotors are exactly what you want for heavy lifting. The strongest helicopter I know of is the CH-53E Super Stallion, and that is a single rotor aircraft (even though it has multiple engines).

VikingCoder 15y ago
I think 10,000 quadcopters might be able to do something really amazing. I'm back down to "dog-sized," and I'm back to small payloads. It's a design challenge to come up with useful atomic units that such a robot could lift, but the number of them that can operate independently is a serious factor. I'll recast this in terms I'm more familiar with: we used to scale software by getting faster CPUs with more powerful instructions. Now we're all being told to scale by numbers of CPUs. Can building construction be similarly recast? Your CH-53E Super Stallion is effectively scaling up. Can we instead use quadcopters to scale out?
- nerdo 15y ago
  Like in Batteries Not Included?