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Comment by CommieBobDole | Hacker News Reader

The best thing about articles describing "technology that would be incredible except for the one obvious and insurmountable-with-current-technology problem that makes it absolutely useless and is the reason that nobody else did this" is the inevitable point where they admit that it's absolutely useless because of the obvious and insurmountable problem but that the team is totally working on solving it any day now.

In this case the problem is that it only carries 3kg and has almost no battery life, but the team is working on another drone that follows it around and changes the batteries when they run out, so eventually for the minimal cost of two of these and like a million batteries you can carry 3kg indefinitely. Or you could just carry it with your hands for free.

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The problem is surmountable in narrow cases in a quite easy, if for some reason non-obvious, way: ditch the battery and plug it in to AC power. This would also give it extra carrying capacity, bringing it up to, say, to 10kg. Now this still isn't much, and it would be compromising stability a bit (especially outdoors) due to reduced inertia, but I can think of couple narrow applications:

- Actually carry stuff up the stairs. Sure, lifts and wheelchair lifts already exist, but not everywhere. If the proliferation of cars over the last century taught us anything, it's that worse solutions that require less or zero construction changes on-site win. Classic "worse is better".

- Ferry light cargo across long but thin stretches of impassable terrain. Think military or EMTs moving supplies back and forth over a river, construction crew moving small stuff up the steep mountainside. Sure, there exist solutions for this already, but they're bulkier and more expensive to set up; for the drone, all you need is a generator and a long power cable.

(Yes, I'm stretching credulity here a bit. Yes, this particular product makes little sense as-is, but the idea of a stabilized drone platform isn't, in general, entirely bad.)

Side question: what if they replaced the batteries and electric motors with gas tanks and an ICE? Maybe that could give it more useful carrying capacity, at the expense of noise and being unsexy to modern environmental sensibilities.

>Side question: what if they replaced the batteries and electric motors with gas tanks and an ICE?

Congratulations, you have invented the helicopter.

I know. Specifically, I reinvented gasoline-powered model RC helicopters, that were all the rage before battery-powered quadcopters became a thing, and scaled them up. I.e. I don't recall anyone trying a "palletrone"-like thing with an ICE-based platform, despite the tech for it being mature for like 50 years or so.

> I.e. I don't recall anyone trying a "palletrone"-like thing with an ICE-based platform, despite the tech for it being mature for like 50 years or so.

You need far greater reaction speeds for a viable quadcopter to remain stable than an ICE, much less a turbojet engine, is capable of.

There has been some project featured on here, I think it was a single-prop chopper, kept hovering and centered just by minutely controlling exactly when torque was created by the motor. Absolutely f..ing nuts.

> I think it was a single-prop chopper, kept hovering and centered just by minutely controlling exactly when torque was created by the motor. Absolutely f..ing nuts.

I recall a video of someone sticking a RC chopper rotor to a fixed-wing model aircraft and turning it into a thrust vectoring propeller with software, giving the plane ability to pull some unique acrobatics.

> You need far greater reaction speeds for a viable quadcopter to remain stable than an ICE, much less a turbojet engine, is capable of.

You can split the problem in two: use ICE to generate thrust, vector it with passive elements on fast-reacting electric servos. Or, you can retain all the electric hardware, but replace the battery with an ICE generator and a gas tank - the main problem here is reducing weight, and gasoline has much better energy density than batteries.

You'll enjoy the stick with a double blade prop on each end, using sub-revolution speed control to do it's thrust vectoring. The second prop is only needed to counter torque, btw.

Hum... Helicopters have several disadvantages for finely controlled flights near the ground.

You will probably want to feed a generator and some small battery pack.

No, he has invented the Hover Barrow - as seen in 1960.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OmJ-8JMw_l4

I believe given the context, where it's flying indoors in a populated area, this is more like the "manhack" drones from Half Life. :P

Dragging a power cable up and down stairs? Cables are heavy and they snag on stuff. If you ever do a mobile robot project with a tether you quickly discover these are their primary properties.

I’m surprised they didn’t include the default purpose for all similarly useless inventions: Search and Rescue.

The funny thing is that (power density) isn't even the only single obvious and insurmountable problem. What about:

1. The fact that carrying larger loads would make this extremely noisy, making it nearly impossible to use anywhere indoors.

2. Similarly, as another commenter said, if you scaled up the load capacity, then you'd basically be creating a hurricane in any enclosed space.

3. Thus, if all you are left with is outdoor applications, this device compares negatively in nearly every way with a standard delivery aerial drone.

I really wish such journalists (or their editors) would have to spend a day using that stuff. Any professional who moves stuff around will have their prefered helping technology, be it wagons or a hand cart or whatever, but that stuff?

Unless your usecase is to deliver a sixpack of beer across a minefield any other solution will work better and that includes putting your stuff on a tablecloth and dragging it across the floor

I would think that the fact that the downdraft will make this completely useless in any environment that has any small objects untethered within about a 2m radius also falls into that category.

The other thing is, is if there was demand for load-carrying, rough terrain compatible robots, why aren't legged robots like Boston Dynamics' making a dent in the market?

They're strictly superior than the hoverbot on battery life and carrying capacity, are there other downsides I'm missing? Or is there just plain not a market for this thing?

>> only carries 3kg and has almost no battery life

Don't worry. They will used beamed microwave power delivery. The operator will just have to wear a 2.5kg lead apron to protect themselves. When used for food delivery, the power delivery beam will also act as an effective heat lamp.

With a powerful enough microwave beam, you could lift and propel the thing through surface ablation and wouldn't need the propellers at all.

If we're going for line-of-sight, a more realistic solution would be to ditch the battery and hook it up to mains (or a portable generator); see my longer reply upthread.

Good god, I nearly did a spit take. That's the most irresponsible and horrifying tech idea I've ever heard. That's great, but we can do better- what about Project Orion but for local food delivery?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

I think, besides the battery issues, that a large problem with something that is powerful enough to carry a respectable weight, is that it is also powerful enough to lop your arm off if you’re not careful.

The Irish company Manna have already completed 40,000 fast-food deliveries with a drone that carries 3.5 kg (~8 lb) with ~30,000 cm3. It can fly between 50-65m (165-215ft) above ground and lowers to a height of 15m (50ft) to deliver food via a tether. It achieves a top speed of up to 80 km/h.

They posit that one employee can oversee several drones and therefore realize twenty deliveries per hour, ten times as much as a delivery person can achieve on the road in the same time frame

https://www.manna.aero/ https://www.dronewatch.eu/bobby-healy-manna-drone-delivery-w...

For industrial use, we have huge amounts of copy-cats like the HZH Y100 which is a 6-axis, 12-wing transport drone with a maximum load of 100kg and a 90-minute endurance.

> In this case the problem is that it only carries 3kg and has almost no battery life, but the team is working on another drone that follows it around and changes the batteries when they run out

We do that in America too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-25_Stingray

> that the team is totally working on solving it any day now.

With just a itty bitty bit more funding!

I think of it as betting that antigravity is just around the corner. Not a bet I'd make, but I do admire the gumption.

its singularity speculation .if the battery gets better, the power source gets smaller or a smaller lift generator gets developed you might be able to exercise upwards lift from the next tesla via patents .

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