Collaborate Disseminate
So it’s 2023, and you really feel like we should have flying cars by now, right? Well, as long as you ignore the problem of scale presented by [Nick Rehm]’s …read more Continue reading Fly Like You Drive With This Flying RC Drift Car
Picking propeller size for any aircraft, but especially VTOLs, it’s a tradeoff between size and RPM. You can either move a large volume of air slowly or a small volume …read more Continue reading Large Tip Driven Copter Turns Very Slowly
With cheap RC hardware, powerful motors, and high-capacity battery packs, getting something to fly has never been easier. It also helps that, whether you’re into fixed-wing craft or multirotors, there’s …read more Continue reading Foam F-35 Learns to Hover
The availability of cheap and powerful RC motors and electronics has made it possible for almost anyone to build an RC flying machine. Software is usually the bigger challenge, which has led to the development of open-source packages like BetaFlight …read more
Continue reading dRehmFlight: Customizable Flight Stabilisation For Your Weird Flying Contraptions
Quadcopters have incredible flying abilities, but if one loses just a single motor, it drops like a rock. Researchers from the University of Zurich’s Robotics and Perception Group have proven that this does not need to be the case by …read more
Continue reading Controlling A Quadcopter With One Dead Motor
When mentioning drones, most people automatically think of fixed-wing designs like the military Reaper UAV or of small quadcopters. However, thanks in large part to modern electronics, motors, and open-source control systems, it is possible to build them in a variety of shapes and sizes. [Benjamin Prescher] is working on …read more
Continue reading Flies Like a Quadcopter, But This Drone Design Has Only One Propeller
[Project Malaikat] is a 3D printed hybrid bipedal walker and quadcopter robot, but there’s much more to it than just sticking some props and a flight controller to a biped and calling it a day. Not only is it a custom design capable of a careful but deliberate two-legged gait, but the props are tucked away and deployed on command via some impressive-looking linkages that allow it to transform from walking mode to flying mode.
Creator [tang woonthai] has the 3D models available for download (.rar file) and the video descriptions on YouTube contain a bill of materials, but beyond …read more
Continue reading Hybrid Robot Walks, Transforms, And Takes Flight
If you’re not involved in the world of remote controlled vehicles, you may not know there’s a difference between “toy” and “hobby” grade hardware. For those in the RC community, a toy is the kind of thing you’ll find at a big box store: cheap, works OK, but lacking in features and build quality. On the other hand, hobby hardware is generally considered to be of higher quality and performance, as well as being more modular. At the risk of oversimplification: if you bought it ready to go from a store it’s probably a toy, and if you built it …read more
Continue reading Frankendrones: Toy Quads With A Hobby Grade Boost
To build any sort of autonomous vehicle, you need a controller. This has to handle all sorts of jobs – reading sensor outputs, controlling motors and actuators, managing power sources – controlling a vehicle of even moderate complexity requires significant resources. Modern cars are a great example of this – even non-autonomous vehicles can have separate computers to control the engine, interior electronics, and safety systems. In this vein, [E.N. Hering] is developing a modular autonomous vehicle controller, known as YAUVC.
The acronym stands for Yet Another Unmanned Vehicle Controller, though its former name – Fly Hard With A Vengeance …read more
Continue reading Hackaday Prize Entry: Yet Another Unmanned Vehicle Controller
Find out how a NASA enthusiast and fan made the move from being an enterprise IT Pro to working with the IT gear that is onboard the International Space Station.
read more Continue reading Profile: From Enterprise IT Pro to NASA ISS Flight Controller