Drone Helicopter Hybrid 

This is crazy. You breezed over the concept so effortlessly, I would almost believe it was easy...

Gonna have to pick my jaw up off the floor... Incredible work as always, Tom!

this is where you realize Tom is an actual aeronautics engineer not just a kid goofing off in his yard

Guy builds and refines a never seen before kind of aircraft and brushes it off as a fun weekend project. What an incredible world we live in.

this is honestly the most impressive thing i've seen helicopter related

Yeah the design is cool, but I came here to see Tom wink at me in slow motion ;)

amazing video! you could explore the "rigid rotor" configuration. Lockheed Martin used it on it's Cheyenne. It use a "flywheel" inertia to actuate its blades

This is awesome. This is easily one of the best drone projects I've seen on RU-vid. It's accessible, direct, detailed, and actually explores something new. And it works!.

It’s crazy that these motors can be controlled on such a small time scale with enough precision for this to work.

_Learn how this man eliminates the need of active actuation on his helicopter. Servo manufacturers hate him!_

You have thoroughly impressed this helicopter pilot. This is amazing.

I’m here for the grass. That grass is amazing. It’s so green and perfectly mown. I love the stripes.

2:33 -- That's never gonna wor..... 5:38 -- My god!

So good! It's great to see this kind of stuff is possible outside of a research environment

I am so beguiled by the huge helicopter build, all those shiny parts!

Unbelievable, as an avid helicopter and drone builder for decades, I’m trueky amazed that you even attempted this, and that you made it work is incredible

I love this! Using software to eliminate hardware. Amazing!

After 10 crashes: "I thiiiink I might have to make some changes to the code." Well done dude! This is awesome!

Your explanations and the use of the high speed video make this complex feat understandable. I am inspired by your need to do something just because you think it can be done.

Helicopter pilot from Fl, USA. Well done. This is a very interesting concept. Problems with larger scale vehicles would be vibration. The tail rotor must be constantly accelerating and decelerating to compensate for a continuous changing torque output from the motor.

I don't think some people are understanding just how insane this actually is. It's like a helicopter, but not at all... I love this so much

Stunning. You can learn something new every day - in a most enjoyable way.

Nice one.. I love when you get that "AH-HA" moment from something like this..

Another staggering piece of back yard engineering from Tom. It warms my heart to see young people doing serious engineering like this. Its where the truly great innovations are born. well done Tom - another outstanding piece of work and very well presented.

Incredible! Who would have thought that was possible. Good job.

Rest assured Tom, that nearly seamless transition from wide to macro at 3:04 has not gone unappreciated. 😎

I found this idea just as fascinating the first time I saw it, glad you actually went out and made it into a helicopter! Unfortunately I don't think it's very easily scalable due to the fatigue induced at the 45° hinges, but on small-scale DIY helicopters it certainly brings the theoretical cost down. Of course, off-the-shelf swashplates exist... but this is fully able to be self-fabricated, compared to the swashplates.

This is incredible, I can't believe it's possible

when you explained the concept I was straight up not believing that it would ever work in practice. I'm still kinda in disbelief. it seems like this technique could be used to make RC helicopters much more mechanically simple and cheap to produce, right?

I'm literally amazed!!! So good job! I've been trying this technique for a lot of time now and couldn't achieve a good sine control of the brushless motor. U use a double H bridge for control or a customized ESC? Will you share the software somewhere? Once again, so good work! :)

I literally said "Thats incredible" out loud when you showed the slow motion of the simple helicopter changing blade angles.

Wow! Very nice! Very educational! Thanks for sharing your engineering, thoughts and ideas! My parents bought me a 5 in 1 water pump kit back in the late 70’s. Was probably the best gift ever for a 12 year old! It probably has much to do with why I often can understand and troubleshoot a hydraulic system so quick and accurately while others stand and give blank stares.

US Gov't: We'll take your ENTIRE STOCK

Hey bud you just did the "impossible." A very big congratulations and cudo's from Las Vegas, NV - Aerospace Engineer

This is an awesome little project, I never knew how the swash plate worked. Great information and an excellent electronic conversion from mechanical means. I am sure one could figure out with the use of a flight controller some algorithms to react to conditions like wind and inputs. Its a thinker

I love how you have the patience to get it dialled in. You know a principle works and you keep going until you can display it 👍👍

When you said Drone Helicopter Hybrid I assumed it would be a drone with helicopter style props.

I just don´t know, if the word "genius" is good enough for him.

The test flights reminded me of learing to fly my Honey Bee FP all those years ago. Nice video Tom!

I cannot believe how well this works! I've seen a lot of your videos and to see you pull something like this off is a huge!

Wow, that's really incredible. Your persistence is admirable.

Tom is perfect example of practice makes man perfect 👍

Brilliant. Deserves recognition. I hope Tom’s vast potential is fully realised.

The refinement process must have earned you the nickname of "Blade Ruiner".

OMG!!! This ModLab paper is one of my favorites. Like you, ever since I found it I’ve wanted to replicate it. Great work Tom. I love following your projects. You are inspiring!!!

Genius! Congrats and thanks for sharing.

That's a really good proyect. Thank you!

Tom, just wanted to join in and say: Amazing work, this was truly impressive. Did not think something like this would be possible

Tom... You are brilliant! Fantastic work on this. What is interesting is that this is some what like a teetering rotor system, similar to what is on the robinson helicopter. Other helicopters use a little more complex system of being fully articulated. One of the key limits of a helicopter is retreating blade stall. As the heilcopter airspeed increased the blade that is moving away from the direciton of travel, the blade needs to flap upwards to account for the loss of airspeed over the rotor blade. (Rotational speed - airspeed). Likewise, the opposite is happening on the advancing blade. Once the retreating blade stalls, the aircraft pitches up violently, loses tail rotor authority and the aircraft will rotate opposite the direction that the blades are rotating. (It is ugly). So, there are a few helicopers that use coaxial rotor systems, Kman and the Sikorsky Commanche. So my question is this... Could it be possible to take to counter rotating blades and then use a pusher proper ; then adjust the rotor RPM to control yaw? This would not likely bank or roll very well... but in terms of a stable platform on to which to mount sensors, it might be more power efficient allowing it to remain aloft longer. Might such as system negated retreating blade stall? Either way... Excellent work here. Cheers... John Hall (Prior USCG helicopter pilot)

Crazy mad skills this guy has. You made my head spin with all your casual engineering lingo. Really man, WOW!

Wow, no words. I can’t imagine how much time you spent trying to work out the controller program

I fly helis, this is impressive But I think that the connection between the rotor and the rotor head is under way to much stress to be reliably After all, you are wobbling the entire rotor blade 3000 times a minute

Genius! Thanks for sharing

awesome man! I love all these prototypes ideas and the thinking behind it. Thanks for showing one and explaining the other!

what amazed me most was how the 3d-printed middle-pieces held up O.O

That's absolutely mind blowing! I never thought a helicopter could be so simple

Very impressive! Thanks for sharing!

That blew my mind. You sir are a genius.

thats really crazy

Amazing, the virtual swash plate is an engineering marvel! Good work

Congratulations! Really nice idea and work.

i would like to see another video on this. i think it is worth investigating to see if something can be done about the motor heating up. i think you should try making a variable-sinusoidal gearbox. one way i think you could do this is with a universal joint, which turns a constant input into a sinusoidal output of varying amplitude depending on the angle it’s oriented at. you could set it up so that a servo adjusted the angle of the joint and another servo adjusted the phase.

This is amazing you were able to get it to work when I first started watching I was like there is no way

Dude. Next level. I can't believe how well this worked. This is going to put the helicopters in my next video to utter shame! 😂

What an awesome accomplishment ! And a great idea to control the angle of attack for a scaled down chopper

I would die before ever completing any of these things. Very well done! Awesome

Very impressive! 👏

Im honestly just amazed at how quiet it is

Much Love bro. .appreciate your clear explanation....

Well done on getting it working!!! Well done bro!

I look forward to buying one of these off aliexpress in about 2 weeks.

Kiwi Co seems like the perfect advertiser for this channel.

I believe if you want to go one step further you could add a collective function by offsetting the hinge vertically so that varying the RPM varies pitch. Then you’d be effectively getting two channels of control, one through rpm, the other acceleration.

This is just amazing! Thank you!

That is legitimately one of the most amazing ideas I've seen come to fruition

It's incredible how much you can achieve just by giving a weird shape to the current graph

I am blown away by how much this simplifies helicopters. Truly brilliant.

Amazing. The alpha-3 hinge plus cyclic variation of motor speed provides all control. Not applicable to larger craft, though, I suspect, due to inertia.

That was literally mind-blowing how simple it is and it does actually fly! Thanks for sharing and explaining this amazing concept!

That Tom, is really well done! I'm continually impressed with your dedication and patience to the stuff you make. Keep up the great work!

My mind is blown. you did such a good job on this man.

This is brilliant. As a heli flyer and a drone flyer, I would absolutely buy this if it was dialed in and had parts support.

Ifound you through the suggested videos 1 year ago still enjoying your videos. your videos are also very informative. I just made a RU-vid channel so I'm definitely doing my research on how to do these builds. Thanks for all your awesome videos. Please keep it up!

That’s truly amazing. I would’ve never believed that you could achieve such blade pitch control by altering the rotational speed of the specially designed main rotor.

Genius over my head..code..nice work

Amaging thinking !! using jerk to change angle of attack. Genius.

Tom Stanton you have already inspired me. That's why I'm getting a 3d printer ;)

One question: how does this accelerating and deaccelerating affect the power consumtion? If that would be a problem, one could implement something like a resonance circuit that could store and release the energy in the right moment to make it more efficient. But since the frequency of the rotor depends on thrust that would be quite tricky to adjust the resonance frequency of the circuit, it would maybe also need to be variable? 🤔

Great project Thanks for sharing your journey 🙂

Pretty amazing well done sir

"Now do an inverted, tail down funnel with it, Jimmy!" 😂 Also, great work on the heli, but a minor correction: CCPM helis can't control each blade individually as the CCPM swash mixing is programmed in such a way that whenever cyclic is applied, whatever happens to one blade will be inversely mirrored on the other blade. I think what you meant was that collective and cyclic pitch can be applied independently of one another, which is something your frankenheli cannot do.

This is awesome as always dude! Never came across that, really interesting control mechanism :)

I love that, during the initial launches, as the helidrone gets more altitude precrash, the camera makes noticable moves further away

Well done Tom. Top effort

4:14 Looks like every time I try to fly a toy helicopter

I really love how BPS.space, Joel creates, Practical Engineering, and probably several other tech/DIY/maker channels are also here. Love this community of youtubers

Well, that answers a question I had about hinging VAWT wind turbine blades to have the lee side blade fold up. It should reduce drag in rapidly changing wind. Fold down the blade so it’s closed until it opens and catches the wind.

Crazy how you done all this in software. It’s fantastic engineering. It’s beautiful

6:58 Tom: ok camera, time for an outro Camera: LEAVES Tom: ...? Camera: I FOCUS LEAVES

2:05 I swear I was back in 95' connecting to AOL dial-up or smth.