
New Electric Drone Has Groundbreaking Flight Time - kevitivity
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/aerospace/aviation/new-electric-drone-has-groundbreaking-flight-time
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jjcm
I feel like this is more advertising than actual innovation. They claim that
the battery packs form part of the structural frame, but based on the images
on the site [0] it looks like they're just loose batteries inserted
everywhere. The lithium batteries themselves aren't providing any structural
integrity by the appearance of the drone, and I suspect that they end up using
more surface area that has to be structural to encase them than if they just
had one giant brick in the center with carbon fiber arms.

I'm playing armchair scientist here, but I think the advertising and marketing
are better than the actual breakthroughs.

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/usZuqFG.png](https://i.imgur.com/usZuqFG.png)

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asteli
That's also terrible from a vehicle agility/stability perspective -- generally
you want to centralize mass as much as possible to reduce moment of inertia.
Additionally cylindrical cells waste mass on metal casings -- li-poly pouch
cells are a better use of mass.

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noobiemcfoob
Would you not accept 10x terrible handling for 3x longer flight times?

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ALittleLight
Depends on the purpose of the mission. Flying for fun or to deliver packages
agility is probably more important. Flying for surveillance perhaps it would
be better to be in the air longer.

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heavenlyblue
To be fair, what's going to happen to the drone shipping industry is probably
the same thing that happened to the naval shipping industry: we will converge
somewhere at local minima between super-fast and super-cheap shipping times.

So I could see how fitting the batteries everywhere in the drone might just
work. But at the same time I don't see why no one is yet shaping the batteries
for the frame itself.

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kawfey
After scrolling through their website [0] I can't help but to think of Portal
2's "Official Turrets" trailer [1], except it's batteries instead of bullets.

[0]: [https://impossible.aero/](https://impossible.aero/) [1]:
[https://youtu.be/GGPIQ72-2Vg?t=7](https://youtu.be/GGPIQ72-2Vg?t=7)

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allthenews
>“It never made sense to me that it was possible to have a battery-powered car
that could drive more than 300 miles but not have a battery-powered drone that
could fly more than about 20 minutes,” he says.

I don't see why...drone flight requires substantial power output to counteract
gravity, which increases in proportion to the battery mass. Unlike a rolling
vehicle

This stinks of marketing gibberish.

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perilunar
Also very little opportunity for regenerative braking.

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dotancohen
While quickly descending use the motors as a generator via autorotation?

I'm only joking, but there might in fact be practical application of the
concept.

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perilunar
I don't actually know if it's possible to autorotate a quadcopter. I imagine
you would have very little control during the transition. Quadcopters don't
fly very high anyway, so there's probably little to gain from it.

~~~
thx11389793
autorotation requires control of blade pitch.

~~~
perilunar
It certainly does in helicopters, which have large, relatively heavy blades
you _really_ don’t want to stop turning.

In a quadcopter the blades a small and light, so you could conceivably stop
them and let them turn them in reverse as the airflow changes direction (from
downwards to up through the blades). I think there would be real problem with
control during the transition, and you’d need a lot of height to make it
worthwhile.

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foobarbecue
Why do people buy into this sort of nonsense?? How are VCs and tech writers so
incapable of basic conceptual verification?? This company appears to have
built nothing except for ideas which don't stand up to the most cursory
physical analysis.

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therein
Makes me feel bad about the entire ecosystem. All it takes is to have the
right network and some charisma to get their money.

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bryguy
Does anyone know about hydrogen-powered drones? Something worth considering?
[https://danieldonatelli.wixsite.com/hydrogen-
generator/hydro...](https://danieldonatelli.wixsite.com/hydrogen-
generator/hydrogen-fuel-cell-drone)

~~~
foobarbecue
Yeah, I remember reading about a startup a couple of years ago that was going
to have a quadcopter carry a hydrogen fuel cell and a compressed h2 tank. It
wasn't complete BS, but the tank was at something insane like 5000 psi if I
remember correctly. So it sounded extremely dangerous to me. Anybody remember
what this company was called?

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Hysterisis
Terms like “groundbreaking” and “game changer” get thrown around so much now
that they’ve lost all meaning.

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Lorin
why would it be "groundbreaking" if it's in the air :)

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Moru
When that weight of batteries comes down after running out of power, it will
break the ground.

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sonium
If someone would like to check the validity of their claim, here is a great
calculation tool for drones:
[https://www.ecalc.ch/xcoptercalc.php](https://www.ecalc.ch/xcoptercalc.php)

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Tarragon
"Groundbreaking Flight Time" for a quadrotor.

In 2005 AC-Propulsion flew a fixed wing drone for 48 hours and could have gone
indefinitely.

[https://www.machinedesign.com/news/solar-powered-uav-
flies-t...](https://www.machinedesign.com/news/solar-powered-uav-flies-two-
days-straight)

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mg96226
Not sure how much innovation this is, considering it trades extended flight
time for the inability to replace the battery pack. You get to fly longer, but
once you're done, you're done until you can plug it in and give it the 90
minutes it needs to recharge. For most applications, field-swappable batteries
are a must.

The real breakthroughs will come from new battery chemistry and fuel cells.

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fisherjeff
“It can reach speeds of more than 68 kilometers per hour, and can fly more
than 75 kilometers before recharging.”

So groundbreaking flight time is... one hour?

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make3
they say multiple times that drones only regularly do 20-25 mins

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wereHamster
Racing drones only ~3 minutes, barely enough to finish a single race (a few
laps around the course). And battery is sometimes the limiting factor in
races, where pilots have to slow down just so they are able to finish the
course and not drop out of the sky before the race ends. Small FPV acrobatic
drones fare not much better, 4-5 minutes at the most if you don't fly too
aggressively.

The DJI Mavic 2 can stay up for about 30 minutes, according to the
manufacturer.

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Moru
But a racing drone have to be agile. If you put heavy batteries on the
extremeties of the drone, it won't be able to roll or rotate very fast. It
also takes more energy to fly faster and with more weight.

