Next 10 years. What's your outlook on multirotors/drones

[nechaus]

I have been having some real fun building this quadcopter...

I was thinking today how cheap they are now and easy to access..Do you reckon they will be integrated with our lives in the next 5 years?
Postal companies are talking about using them for deliveries .. food places to...
They are used by the military.. companies ect.. already heaps in the hobby market and people using them for video/photo

Can you imagine them being used by people for regular things.. Taking the rubbish to the tip.. You could have a Rubbish drone.. makes 10 trips to the dump/recycle place a day and do on average 30 kg of rubbish if needed.. no more waiting once a week...

forget something at home and your at work.. dont feel like driving, don't have the time.. you could send it via drone..

the uses can be limitless...

 

[liveforphysics]

I think we will see an explosion of practical uses and rapid widespread adoption. They work too well to not.

I would love to see them replace cars for personal human transport. I want to get into one at home with my wetsuit on and my board, and tell it to drop me at the best surf location for that moment, surf until I'm ready to be picked up, tap a button and it hovers next to me on my board so I can climb on and be flown home in a couple minutes. Roads are a many-thousand year old technology with numerous well known drawbacks. The sky is not a limit, it's the next playground.

 

[Dauntless]

If you're reading it in 'Aviation Week,' you're reading about it years in advance. Interesting stuff about establishing hub areas for the regional activity, what they're PLANNING to build, etc. Stuff that won't exist for a while longer.

How the government is holding them back and they could already be doing so much is the most interesting part. Most interesting statement seemed to be ". . . . early models not cleared for shipboard use arrived last month in Afghanistan to begin operations supporting troops there." Ah, but people are using them even when the government says no here at home, too.

Multirotors most interest me, for arial photography.

 

[nechaus]

nah i did not read that... But will have to find it for my ereader.. Id like to read a mag dedicated to multirotors.

 

[melodious]

The skies are going to be ALOT busier. They'll need to put transmitting IDs on them so the folks in the towers know what's out there too.

 

[liveforphysics]

The drones shouldn't need to be privately owned. The trips will be so short they can just be a subscription service for transportation. Tap an icon on your phone, a drone lands next to you in the next 2mins flown in at 200mph from the local drone fast charging facility.

It's the type of drone you requested. Have 4 people? It's a 4 person drone. Just want to take the recycling away? It's a recycling bin drone.

It's already a cheap enough technology to enable using low production quantity hobby market stuff.

If you were going to make a run of 1 million recycling/garbage drones, I bet you could get impeccable reliability and function through design, and extremely low costs and high quality parts through leveraging volume manufacturing tooling.

 

[etard]

Hate to be a naysayer, Luke has a very Utopian view of the future. I would love to inhabit the future world as Luke sees it. However, the first couple drones that fall out of the sky, chop somebody's head off etc... will put a quick end to the dream, especially in this nanny state. Personally, I think a "guardian angel" drone would be very cool, especially if it waited in line at the DMV for me! 8)

 

[John in CR]

Within 10 years we damn sure better have some good enough battery advances that quads you can ride become commonplace. Then for the commercial to demonstrate how capable and safe they are, the company owner has one fly him up to 10k ft. He jumps off with no parachute, and then after waiting 10 seconds or so the drone flies down and lets him land ever so softly right back into the drone seat.

 

[nechaus]

I just hope a company uses them for something soon.. id like to see delivery drones start soon.. Its very possible now for small packages.. i don't get why its not already happening.. so much innovation is just waiting to happen


the amount of wifi that's used..it could be support for comms... so many things can be done..
they could be used to transmit data them selves like repeater stations for cell companies or making a interconnected web for mapping

I have seen videos of people's DIY drones hovering for like 90 minutes



They could be used to clean up the oceans surface rubbish..

 

[liveforphysics]

Within 10 years we damn sure better have some good enough battery advances that quads you can ride become commonplace. Then for the commercial to demonstrate how capable and safe they are, the company owner has one fly him up to 10k ft. He jumps off with no parachute, and then after waiting 10 seconds or so the drone flies down and lets him land ever so softly right back into the drone seat.

These things are coming. I am aware of 3 different and likely to be successful teams in the bay area alone currently in the construction stages of machines capable of a feat like you're describing.

 

[nechaus]

Within 10 years we damn sure better have some good enough battery advances that quads you can ride become commonplace. Then for the commercial to demonstrate how capable and safe they are, the company owner has one fly him up to 10k ft. He jumps off with no parachute, and then after waiting 10 seconds or so the drone flies down and lets him land ever so softly right back into the drone seat.

These things are coming. I am aware of 3 different and likely to be successful teams in the bay area alone currently in the construction stages of machines capable of a feat like you're describing.

do you know how many kw doe's it take's to hover? roughly..

 

[liveforphysics]

Within 10 years we damn sure better have some good enough battery advances that quads you can ride become commonplace. Then for the commercial to demonstrate how capable and safe they are, the company owner has one fly him up to 10k ft. He jumps off with no parachute, and then after waiting 10 seconds or so the drone flies down and lets him land ever so softly right back into the drone seat.

These things are coming. I am aware of 3 different and likely to be successful teams in the bay area alone currently in the construction stages of machines capable of a feat like you're describing.

do you know how many kw doe's it take's to hover? roughly..

Takes a lot. Work the thrust to weight ratio on your multi-copter. It only gets incrementally better as you scale up. Fortunately the world has high power battery technology in it, and power dense motors.

For every trip I've taken this month, it could have been completed in sub 5 minutes by human transporting multi-rotor, most would have been sub 30seconds of flight time. This is why the costs can be distributed through a bunch of people just paying by the minute for the amount of time they put on a drone each day for all there transportation needs. When it's not needed it flys to the nearest fast charge station.

If you design a brushless motor, controller, and battery correctly, it can have a very long service life with no maintenance needed. A multi-rotor only needs to have motors with props mounted directly to the rotors as it's only moving parts. This should be radically lower maintenance than any helicopter using complex mechanical linkages and gearboxes and clutches and things.

It seems it's likely to be lower maintenance than electric ground vehicles, as it's got less wear-parts by design, and doesn't need to interface with the ground for more than landing and takeoff.

It's just a 2-3x battery breakthrough away from being a very practical transportation technology IMHO. Real and substantial battery breakthroughs are also inevitable.

 

[nechaus]

I wish it was happening right now...
maybe 3 years of intense battery research and we could be doing this eh?

I would be a human test subject for youtube using a multiwii + insane batteries + motors and props...

 

[Hornet dave]

I dont see passenger carrying multicopters becoming a commercial reality anytime soon. The failure mode analysis would drive some very significant design changes from how they appear today. Certification rules would first need to be developed, then met, and thats a long process. Ballistic parachutes would not be enough of a safety net as they have a altitude range of death.

Small unmanned multicopters however will probably become commercially useful. Farmers in particular would be a big market.

 

[Miles]

This seems a good place to post a link to this article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27496737

 

[John in CR]

It's just a 2-3x battery breakthrough away from being a very practical transportation technology IMHO. Real and substantial battery breakthroughs are also inevitable.

Why is the battery stuff taking so long? Back in '08 and '09 there were plenty of stories about 3x-10x improvement less than 3 years from commercial production. If we find out that BIG has been squashing significant advancements in battery tech, it should be considered a crime against humanity and punishable as such. Crap like Chevron/Texaco pulled with NiMH should get a retroactively effective law slapped on those responsible.

 

[etard]

Wow, never thought of it like that Luke! Imagine being able to run a service with prices at $50 a trip but being able to make 10 trips in an hour. If it costs $10,000/ day to run, you would still profit!

I am envisioning a glass elevator attached to 4 rotors with designated landing pads all over the city.

 

[nechaus]

speaking of..


[youtube]Jgb74J6XAKo[/youtube]

 

[MikeFairbanks]

I've been semi-involved in this stuff for a long time. www.aplanding is the go-to place for guys who are doing this regularly and are often making money (photography).

The technology is far from ready for drone deliveries and such. The only reason the Pentagon is so successful is that they are flying real airplanes but without the pilot on board. The drones are huge and carry advanced weapons systems along with advanced GPS systems. Plus, they rarely fly those things over the heads of Americans. Americans will have an absolute fit the day one of those things crashes in the local park, beach, field, etc.

Smaller drones for deliveries, etc. will fail, and they'll fall out of the sky like a rock.

With RC planes and helicopters, two pounds and under are classified as park flyers. They are fun and you can safely crash it in to almost anything. Could they cause injury? Yes, but it's unlikely. I've crashed a few and they are mostly just Styrofoam.

The bigger ones with the big cameras and such are extremely risky, regardless of how much GPS-enabled gear is onboard.

Plus, the more they fly the more likely jimmy and Billy will take them out with a pellet gun. I know I would if one was buzzing over my house.

 

[nechaus]

I've been semi-involved in this stuff for a long time. http://www.aplanding is the go-to place for guys who are doing this regularly and are often making money (photography).

The technology is far from ready for drone deliveries and such. The only reason the Pentagon is so successful is that they are flying real airplanes but without the pilot on board. The drones are huge and carry advanced weapons systems along with advanced GPS systems. Plus, they rarely fly those things over the heads of Americans. Americans will have an absolute fit the day one of those things crashes in the local park, beach, field, etc.

Smaller drones for deliveries, etc. will fail, and they'll fall out of the sky like a rock.

With RC planes and helicopters, two pounds and under are classified as park flyers. They are fun and you can safely crash it in to almost anything. Could they cause injury? Yes, but it's unlikely. I've crashed a few and they are mostly just Styrofoam.

The bigger ones with the big cameras and such are extremely risky, regardless of how much GPS-enabled gear is onboard.

Plus, the more they fly the more likely jimmy and Billy will take them out with a pellet gun. I know I would if one was buzzing over my house.

I don't think they will fail... they are to promising.. one of my first home built quads could easily take a payload of 1000 grams and stil hover at 80% throttle... but this was ultra cheap.. i have now been spending alot more money on the new parts i have ordered... I am aiming for the 4kg payload mark

.. I managed to decrease the volume on mine by using larger props and slower motors.. i was really happy how quiet it got.. from 20 meters away you can not hear it..


I trust mine enough ..

You really need a spectrum analyser to perfect the electronic setup..

 

[Rodney64]

Hate to be a naysayer, Luke has a very Utopian view of the future. I would love to inhabit the future world as Luke sees it. However, the first couple drones that fall out of the sky, chop somebody's head off etc... will put a quick end to the dream, especially in this nanny state. Personally, I think a "guardian angel" drone would be very cool, especially if it waited in line at the DMV for me! 8)

Cars kill people on a daily basis and hardly rates as a mention in the news.. and people still drive.

 

[flathill]

the same people who can afford s class mercedes will be dlying to work in multirotor copters

100-250 mile range
5-7min recharge

distributed power means 1000 times safe than one rotor
18 controllers
6 battery packs
6 ironless motors
6 wireless bms'
2 parachutes

 

[Dauntless]

Why is the battery stuff taking so long? Back in '08 and '09 there were plenty of stories about 3x-10x improvement less than 3 years from commercial production.

Because talk is all it ever was. Law of diminishing returns, it'll take more and more work to get less and less improvement. Not that some miracle breakthrough is impossible, it's just so unlikely that nobody should be expecting it or acting like it really is on the horizon.

Crap like Chevron/Texaco pulled with NiMH should get a retroactively effective law slapped on those responsible.

Nope. "Retroactively effective law" is automatically illegal. Article I, Section 9 Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. And in other countries. Of course Obamacare is illegal in the Constitution, there's no shortage of people insisting on burning the founding fathers work like an old rag. From there there's the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, European Convention on Human Rights. . . .

That's all silly talk anyway. Just because you WANT something doesn't mean someone else has it and is keeping if from you. " Crap like (They) pulled with NiMH. . . ." didn't exactly take the NiMH out of use, did it? Passing OUT of Chevron's hands didn't increase use, did it? NiMH never worked miracles anyway, did it?

Dang, I wonder what all these conspiracy theory types will do to someone who DOES come up with something and tries to market it. They'll probably kill him to keep it from "Falling into the WRONG hands."