Definitely not a new form factor, this has been around for donkeys. I've personally seen them for at least 20 years at various industry shows.
This is presumably a totally uncritical lazy press release copy paste. For goodness sake, NASA's Ingenuity is not exactly a secret and that's only the latest in a very long line of commercial coaxial UAS.
Looks like a perfectly nice coax, but exactly the same tradeoffs of much higher mechanical complexity for a slightly smaller operating footprint which make them less appealing for most use cases. The article completely glosses over the fact that most traditional X/+ designs fold for transport.
rasse 49 days ago [-]
It's not a new form factor for Ascent Aerosystems, either. They did a Kickstarter for a coaxial drone in 2017.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures."
blutack 49 days ago [-]
Contraction of donkey's years, a common en-GB idiom for a long time. Good reference though!
hengheng 49 days ago [-]
> Stacking the two rotors generates more thrust per unit area
But that's not a thing, and that's also not how that works. Multicopter rotor design is incredibly subtle.
(Two basic ideas for quad copters are that they need to slowly move horizontally for maximum efficiency, and that the vertical stagger between front and rear pair of rotors matters a lot.)
At the end of the day, this design is exactly what it is: Looks like a bottle which might be nice for someone. And the whole general layout thing boils down to flight time, in its weight class, with a given payload weight. There's not much more to it.
impossiblefork 49 days ago [-]
It at least doubles the thrust per swept area area, probably more, due to the counter-rotation and that the second stage rotor experiences a higher airspeed.
This isn't a multicopter. It's a coaxial helicopter. The design parameter most similar to the distance between two rotors on a multicopter is the rotor diameter.
It's obviously going to be less maneuverable though relative to the thrust, due to the cyclic being on only one rotor.
raydiak 49 days ago [-]
Far less than double. Putting one rotor directly in the turbulent wash of another is nowhere near as efficient as two well-separated rotors, for a number of reasons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra-rotating_propellers gives an estimate of "between 6% and 16% more efficient than normal propellers".
impossiblefork 47 days ago [-]
Yes, I don't know why I wrote it, since it's obviously wrong. I assumed mentally that they'd put as much power into the second propeller as into the first and that it'd go into the airflow reasonably effectively, but you don't double the thrust by doing that, you presumably double the power in the airflow, so that its velocity velocity to sqrt(2) times what it was, so you get a momentum increase by sqrt(2) and since force is the derivative of momentum the thrust is increased by sqrt(2), and then you a thrust increase by sqrt(2), and maybe you also get those 6-16% you mention.
impossiblefork 49 days ago [-]
Though, how do they control cyclic?
Is there a swashplate or something that I do not see, or is it as I assume, some kind of mechanism that allows cyclic to be controlled implicitly by motor speed? Edit: The patent apparently says they have a swashplate and cyclic control on the bottom rotor, so it's basically a model helicopter.
They can't patent the coaxial bit just by adding the 'on a UAV', so they patent their way of having the blades collapse.
Zanfa 49 days ago [-]
If you look closely at the 6th picture in the article, the swashplate arms are visible on the bottom rotor.
impossiblefork 49 days ago [-]
Ah, yes. I missed them at first.
blutack 49 days ago [-]
They can't patent the coaxial helicopter UAV bit because there's a huge amount of prior art.
impossiblefork 47 days ago [-]
Yes, that is basically the idea.
jackhalford 49 days ago [-]
> Ascent's Helius may make the quadrotor form obsolete
We didn’t kill all the horses when we invented cars, as always the world just gets more complex. Quadcopters have an edge on this in terms of agility so many use cases will still be served by quadcopters
hashtag-til 49 days ago [-]
I'm sure the community will make an inexpensive Pringles version of it.
out_of_protocol 49 days ago [-]
Standard 4-engine copter is VERY simple hardware wise - 4x blades+engines attached directly to a frame, plus some orientation sensors stolen from a phone. And that's enough to maneuver in any direction with ease, with turning radius of zero. That's why the whole industry is booming
wao0uuno 49 days ago [-]
Half Life 2 predicted this more than 20 years ago. Next step is to make the rotors razor sharp.
Why though? Seems way more complicated (swashplates!) for little benefit (a bit more compact?)
blutack 49 days ago [-]
Better if you need to send it to Mars and fly it there, otherwise yes which is why these designs aren't particularly widespread.
HPsquared 49 days ago [-]
The key benefit seems to be it's narrower. I suppose it could be an advantage in fitting through narrow spaces, e.g. doorways.
dwighttk 49 days ago [-]
Ugh I hate those videos that each went to full screen and had to be closed for me to continue READING
I don’t even want em to autoplay much less auto-full-screen
d--b 49 days ago [-]
I think the argument that the quad copter looks incredibly cooler than this flying turd is going to matter eventually.
dogman1050 49 days ago [-]
If it falls over while landing, it'll require manual righting. Flat drones don't have this risk.
bluesounddirect 49 days ago [-]
there is something odd about that site . scroll it starts playing a video. scroll past another point it does it again . scammy !
maxldn 49 days ago [-]
I guess they decided that auto play video wasn’t _quite_ irritating enough
Fokamul 49 days ago [-]
Sorry but this is overpriced crap, maybe good for US army buying thousands of these, because someone knows someone in government.
But if you really want to see proven drone designs, which are upgraded by war experience, just look at Ukraine drone units. That's it.
meheleventyone 49 days ago [-]
That's probably overly dismissive. Drone warfare in Ukraine is one specific usecase and has been dominated by different factors, notably signal jamming, single use and mass production. This configuration might have some sensible usecases that won't necessarily match.
Rendered at 06:28:40 GMT+0000 (UTC) with Wasmer Edge.
This is presumably a totally uncritical lazy press release copy paste. For goodness sake, NASA's Ingenuity is not exactly a secret and that's only the latest in a very long line of commercial coaxial UAS.
Looks like a perfectly nice coax, but exactly the same tradeoffs of much higher mechanical complexity for a slightly smaller operating footprint which make them less appealing for most use cases. The article completely glosses over the fact that most traditional X/+ designs fold for transport.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ascentaerosystems/sprit...
"What giants?" asked Sancho Panza.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just their sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Quixote, "you don't know much about adventures."
But that's not a thing, and that's also not how that works. Multicopter rotor design is incredibly subtle.
(Two basic ideas for quad copters are that they need to slowly move horizontally for maximum efficiency, and that the vertical stagger between front and rear pair of rotors matters a lot.)
At the end of the day, this design is exactly what it is: Looks like a bottle which might be nice for someone. And the whole general layout thing boils down to flight time, in its weight class, with a given payload weight. There's not much more to it.
This isn't a multicopter. It's a coaxial helicopter. The design parameter most similar to the distance between two rotors on a multicopter is the rotor diameter.
It's obviously going to be less maneuverable though relative to the thrust, due to the cyclic being on only one rotor.
Is there a swashplate or something that I do not see, or is it as I assume, some kind of mechanism that allows cyclic to be controlled implicitly by motor speed? Edit: The patent apparently says they have a swashplate and cyclic control on the bottom rotor, so it's basically a model helicopter.
They can't patent the coaxial bit just by adding the 'on a UAV', so they patent their way of having the blades collapse.
We didn’t kill all the horses when we invented cars, as always the world just gets more complex. Quadcopters have an edge on this in terms of agility so many use cases will still be served by quadcopters
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?165680-Man-Ki...
https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?1991999-Heli-...
I don’t even want em to autoplay much less auto-full-screen
But if you really want to see proven drone designs, which are upgraded by war experience, just look at Ukraine drone units. That's it.