5 ms·
It would look like a quadrotor, and therefore be more hip and attract more press and possibly more investments. If I'm being generous, I'd say the advantages a
by murbard2 12y ago
It would look like a quadrotor, and therefore be more hip and attract more press and possibly more investments.
If I'm being generous, I'd say the advantages are:
- Safer than a helicopter due to rotor redundancy
- Easier to pilot
Disadvantages
- More expensive to build
- Less stable in flight
- Probably can't glide down with autorotation as well in case of engine failure
- Probably needs to run with a turbine generating electricity rather than directly using the engine to drive the rotor
- The ease of flying benefit can be solved in software anyway.
- JshWright 12y agoA quadrotor doesn't have any sort of 'redundancy'. If you lose a rotor, you've lost control, and will be hitting the ground in pretty short order. I see multiple rotors as a disadvantage... more things to go wrong.
- murbard2 12y agoIt depends on your design. You can build it with separate engines and manage to land safely on two diagonally opposite engines.
- kenrikm 12y agoI'm not sure that's feasible. I've been flying multi-rotors for quit some time and if you lose a motor on a quad it's nearly instantaneously on a collision course with the ground. Y-6 or Hexacopter would be more feasible from a redundancy standpoint.
- derwiki 12y agoQuadroter no, but multirotor yes. DJI's S900 and S1000 are designed such that two props can fail and it stays in the air.
- JoshTriplett 12y agoThat depends heavily on your control system and how well you've tested it. In theory, a control system for a quadcopter that has independently controllable rotors could keep itself stable if one goes out. In practice, any control path you haven't tested probably won't work.
- JshWright 12y agoThe biggest issue I see is dealing with the unbalanced torque... You could probably manage a 'controlled crash', but that's about it.