Mzungu_Mkubwa
I love this design! It's just a brilliant, yet simple concept, and very well executed. This one is worthy, IMO, to be taken to the next level as a human-carrying transport... In fact, I think you're looking at the future of personal air transportation, folks. Solve the wing retraction / folding challenge (can't have that huge wingspan sitting in my driveway, eh?) and this baby's ready to haul my traffic-jam-hating butt to work and back every day! Bring it on!
Tristram Metcalfe
Having 5 engines with 80% of them dead weight 95% of the time to travel is not an efficient future transportation. But if its need is 90% a hover function, then its a very versatile UAV with legs to come home quick and safely after lurking over a point of interest. Transforming geometry frames can use minimum engines all of the time in both worlds.
kj7u
It seems to me that tilting rotors would be less weight and have already been tested extensively on manned planes. The tilting rotors can take off and land and hover and then tilt forward to speed from place to place. When you think about it, isn't this what the quad copter concept does already? The entire copter tilts forward to speed from place to place. Is the speed limit of quadcopter less than what this new version offers? If you need more flying time, a gas engine could be used in hybrid fashion. Just thinking. L.
Barry Dennis
The tendency to over-design, always looking at expanding mission capabilities, takes away from the concept of low-cost single purpose/dual-purpose design that led to the current highly efficient and now fearsome capabilty of Drones. Not to say that weaponsized drones haven't served a needed purpose, but increasing the cost geometrically somewhat obscures the original surveillance intent of gathering intelligence on targets and "persons of interest" for military forces to capture or destroy. The adoption of simple surveillance drone capability on U.S. borders, particularly in the South, and the performance to date, bodes well for using technology to improve performance and reduce costs.
Slowburn
Ok it's cool. But I do not see the need for vertical flight in navel usage. Given it's size and operating speed a fixed wing could easily be operated off a helipad. Just add a small magnet to the nose gear to hold it in place while the crew member walks out to collect it. Given that it can be operated by remote control the computer that lands the thing does not need to be on it.
@ Tristram Metcalfe
Using propellers in excess to needed power is highly inefficient and the weight increase to make the electric motors capable for continuous operations would further decrease efficiency. This is a great design for what it does I just don't see the need it has for vertical operation in naval operations.
Tord Eriksson
Modern batteries have roughly the same energy density as fuel, so that argument is not valid.
Quad technology is very established, thus mature, and simple, although scaling up doesn't really work. To lift a big camera you need octocopters, at least, and to lift humans you need even higher numbers of props and motors!
So a simple solution is a glider with an Internal Combustion engine, combined with a quad, just what we got here!
An airplane with a single, oversize, engine, with contra-rotating propellers, will be a much better solution, mechanically, and technically!
More efficient every way, and less complex!
nutcase
Rubbish! This is much much better www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOJ8TWYUedA&feature=player_embedded
Mzungu_Mkubwa
@Slowburn: I think the idea here is that quad-rotor hover capabilities are just as useful while on target as they are during take-off and landing.
@Tord: I'm not sure where you're getting your energy density information from, but check the chart at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density ... a bit of a difference there. Lets just say that batteries have a loooong way to go yet...
As to incorporating a tilt rotor system, that could be a more efficient option, but not as simple or as "off the shelf" for scaled down models such as this UAV. The idea here, I think, was to combine to proven techs for "model" aircraft into one hybrid design that provides the advantages of both with minimal efficiency loss: electric for VTOL and liquid fuel for cruise. Could the cruise engine be electric as well, with a backup ICE for generation? Sure, but again, for this kind of vehicle you're getting into some un-proven (as in not established, widely utilized) technology that, while this company may have plans to develop, doesn't make for a current product to sell today.
AeroDude
@ Tord S Eriksson Energy density of Petrol: 47.5 MJ/kg and 34.6 MJ/liter; Engery density of lithium-ion battery pack: 0.3 MJ/kg and 0.4 MJ/liter
Slowburn
@ MzunguMkubwa
At that size I have real trouble seeing any task that the navy would use that hovering will do a better job than flying in tight circles.