That is insanely cool. Quit your job and play with quadrocopters cool.
I'm surprised we've not seen larger versions of this platform for civilian use.
I'm surprised we've not seen larger versions of this platform for civilian use.
For transporting big things: it's more efficient to have larger rotors than to have multiple rotors.
For transporting really big things: see above, and helicopters have been around for a long long time; "we" (not me) have decades of experience with helicopters; you probably really want something that is safe and reliable. You can't just scale up your model.
As for quadrocopter piloting: right now, all pilots crash. Repeatedly. Luckily, repairs are cheap (unless you happen to carry an expensive camera). For a full-size aircraft, crashing is probably not an option, so add lots of dev/testing time for safety features and pilot training.
BTW (somewhat unrelated): One huge problem with (smaller) quadrocopters is the many people that start new copter projects and get nowhere instead of contributing to one of the existing major projects or reusing its soft/hardware. Some of these projects are already way beyond what a single person or even a small team can achieve in a few years work.
Second, precision machining. It is much easier to balance 1 set of rotors weighing hundreds of pounds than it would be to balance 4 of them. I'm guessing your typical quadcopter is too small right now for this to be a real concern.
Size of the aircraft is a very important point, but there are other reasons besides the two you mentioned. Generally, larger motors are more efficient than smaller ones. Larger, slower, props are more efficient than smaller, faster, ones, because Thrust ~ Rotor Speed^2 but Power ~ Rotor Speed ^ 3. Why? I don't recall, sorry. I'm more interested in the software. (If you do figure it out though, let me know.)
At least that's my guess. And if I'm right, it's also why, to a first approximation, the power generated by a windmill is proportional to the cube of the wind speed.
It's a scale-dependent effect of air.
Seeing this and saying: "These are just helicopters, but smaller" isn't very helpful.
The big difference between these and "real" helicopters (either realsize ones or RC helicopters) is that now these things are using a super fast feedback loop to find their balance.
This could definitely one day help piloting real helicopters: just like these feedback-looped quadcopters are way easier to fly than the RC copters...
Would be fun to have a small working group in Manchester (UK) - shout if you're in the area and are interested.
I'm using UAVP-NG (http://ng.uavp.ch/).
It's open source, there is a custom operation system (NGOS) and half a dozen hardware revisions and also a few side projects such as a 4x-BLC. There are over a dozen people actively working on that project now and I believe they've created a nice, easily extensible, platform to base future work on.
On the downside, it isn't the cheapest project. For students like me that can be a bit of a hurdle. Also, you're likely not going to get around soldering the PCBs yourself. (It looks much harder than it is.)
But do have a look around and check the various projects out for yourself before you pick one.
BTW, if you have any questions, please do shoot me a mail. I like mail. Or drop by #uavp on Freenode. The people there are mostly harmless^W^Wvery friendly (as long as you've read the FAQ first ;) [edit: And now we're waaay offtopic. Sorry.]
There aren't a lot of quadrotors that use pitch control. That's half of their appeal; hook 4 brushless motors up to props and you're good to go. If you add in pitch control, then you either need 8 dof (4 motors, 4 pitch servos) or 5 dof (1 motor with a complicated power train to drive the 4 rotors, and 4 servos for pitch control). Both are more complicated and expensive, and again you might as well just be a helicopter.
RE: Cyclic pitch on quads - I don't think anyone put cyclic pitch on quads before. I think I derived a way to make use of 13DoF for stability and dynamics that are impossible on a heli (hovering while tilting, moving back and forth without tilt, etc). PM me if you're interested in the idea, it's a little hard to describe in words.
That's a student project that needed funding.
• 50lb payload
• Two 12.5HP engines
• Distributing information (their most lucrative reward was the $250 "get a copy of all the information and data" at 10 copies.)
Definitely deadly. I would not be near it in operation.