Love all the real world testing! Too many college engineering projects never see any real life hardware. Seems like you guys made the best of it and learned a ton as well.
You can go a lifetime and never find a team to work with like this. Awesome on all fronts, and the technology innovation is a damn good concept to go after. Well done!
I've wanted to do something like this forever! That was really cool!!! I loved how you autonomously switched the radio link back and forth between plane and quadcopter
I'd imagine this setup would give the benefits of both aircrafts. Long range flight of Ranger and the nimbleness of Scout. In any case very impressive!
This is the content that keeps me on YT. Your flight experiments help me with my flight experiments. I do have goals of being a content creator(that’s a whole other story) but my primary goal in life is flying model aircraft. I’ve been able to shortcut a considerable portion of my projects because of content creators like you(Peter stripol, voidstar labs, Alex labs, etc) and you keep me from Doom scrolling and being sad. So thanks twice over. Once for the good RC flight content, and again for my mental health. Btw the channel I’m working on(not this one) is for mental health.
I was just thinking about doing this concept yesterday with the skyhunter no less. Just got mine, still gotta build it. I like what you got. It's amazing
This wiĺl be the future for long range Evtol passenger transportation. Next step is to have the quad attaching below the fixed wing in forward fligh conditions. Congrats
So cool! Ive had this idea but on larger scale. They did this on Rotor Riot like 2 years ago. Cool idea but extremely difficult to get that small drone not to get sucked into vortex of those larger props on the plane. you might want to try edf. or somekind of prop guards
would an aperture mechanism be an idea for the copter latching mechanism? as the mechanism is self centering and can be probably be printed in one piece
Great project! Have you accounted for the payload? how big it needs to be in order to both drone and wing carry a LiDAR camera of 1kg each for data collection?
Amazing project!! I've seen your paper, and you implemented Drokit, I'm currently working on a similar project implementing Dronekit for Quadcopter. Can I ask about how you guys implemented Dronekit?
Hello, I'm doing a similar project, but I couldn't get such a good video streaming rate with a raspberry. How did you do it? Can you give us some information?
I was just thinking the other day of a fixed wing ferry that could loiter over a search area for a long period before deploying a small & fully charged quadcopter for close-in inspection, but I imagined the scout would have to make its own way home, the idea of having them re-dock felt too crazy to even consider! Your plan is to have the mother craft land to be a base for the scout, you're not thinking about docking in flight, are you?
Initially we thought about docking in-flight, but that would have been very risky and difficult to pull off. I'm sure it could be done with a lot more time and effort though!
I understand why you started with a fixed wing, but... you built it into a big quad. And then you flew it only in hover mode. I think the most novel part of all of this is the docking mechanism. What I'm left wondering is: why did you make certain design decisions that you did*, and what would you do differently in a complete redesign? *Specifically, starting with a fixed wing aircraft and making it hover, opting for autonomous tracking and descent instead of human pilot, implementation of rigid capture instead of softer capture with ropes/bands or even magnets (wasn't it called the MagDock?), refining ambitions to mean landing on a stationary target (which itself is a refining of ambition to landing on a hovering target instead of a moving airplane), and was there a plan to address charging the mini drone from the mothership? Cool project, but I think I see where you pivoted around issues, and I would have liked to see your original vision accomplished. (But I know exactly how difficult these problems are, so I get it.)
Because you can. A huge part of aviation innovation is stretching the definition of what is possible. 120 years after the Wright Brothers took off, flight is now cheap enough that anyone can do it, and the cost is the lowest it’s ever been. We live in the age where humanity is going to make Icarus look like a chump. Truly an exciting time to be alive if you love flight.
What a weird music video. Seriously, just because everyone litters their videos with annoying background tracks doesn't mean it's a good idea. Narrate the video with in-depth technical information. Heck use synthesized speech if you're not comfortable with the narration task right now. Just please no more of this soulless "you must feel good" audio rubbish.
