This is a really novel design.. few moving parts, and solves the main issue with multirotor drones.. namely that they are incredibly inefficient in terms of power required to fly.
When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient.
This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".
If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.
> it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".
That'll depend how efficient the wing is. Usually there's trade-offs when doing a hybrid design (see V-22 Osprey).
Perhaps the trade-off is still a net benefit in that configuration though...
> If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs
Not sure, in my RC flying experience, these aircraft can't lift much weight at all. Ounces are a serious concern, let alone pounds. Adding 1/4 extra weight is a big deal for something this small and without large wings to generate lift - the rotors are going to have to do a lot of work to get off the ground.
It'll probably need to be a pretty big aircraft to have enough battery carrying capacity to guarantee a safe round-trip with possible complications with wind, loiter time for safe landing, obstacle avoidance, etc, and big enough to support the 5lbs load without impacting flight characteristics too much.
For sure you are right about it having a lot of challenges and the total weight vs battery weight vs payload weight is a huge one.
But remember the wing design is competing against "no wing" so it is easy to be a huge improvement. Normal drones don't really get to throttle down and they have to do all their flight controls through engine speed adjustments. Normal flight controls use almost no power & when this thing builds up a head of steam it will be able to throttle back to cruise.
It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges help efficiency. It can probably be optimized for a very narrow speed range as well so I bet they can come up with a very nice airfoil design.
> It looks like a closed edge biplane when it transitions.. the closed edges help efficiency
Perhaps. It could also be mostly to stabilize the aircraft in forward flight, since that's more efficient by itself with a "pulling" rotor than a traditional quad-copter setup (using differential thrust from each motor to control movement and stability).
The closed wing doesn't look very large, so we'll have to see just how much lift they actually get out of it. The airfoil design may not generate much or any lift but instead just be used for control, such as a typical horizontal/vertical stabilizer of an aircraft.
Or perhaps it does generate some lift and helps a bit. Just looks rather small for that role, but I could be wrong. RC aircraft often defy principles that apply to their full-sized brethren.
> (FTA): Amazon declined to release some specifics on the device, citing trade secrets
I guess we'll just have to wait for some more specifics.
I don't know, just speculating it's not providing much lift with it being so small. But, it definitely would help stabilize the aircraft in it's forward flight configuration. You're probably right in that it's doing both.
Was hoping they'd release more details. It's not like RC aircraft have much secret sauce to them... other than Amazon's proprietary package compartment.
I'd like to know more about the support infrastructure they imagine. Even if this doubles flight time compared to current commercial quadcopters it would still have a 40-60min total flight time thus less than half that in range. It's going to require a lot of stations (and battery changes/charging) scattered about as its not like they can launch from warehouses and reach much.
When the initial hype about Amazon drone delivery came out I remember saying it wouldn't work cause multi-rotor drones are so inefficient.
This will make it work... it'll use a fraction of the electricity if it cruises in "plane mode".
If the max Payload is 5lbs I doubt it's going to weigh 50lbs. Maybe 10-20lbs, but the battery weight is the big thing.