Thread: Aerial Robots?
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Unread 10-09-2012, 09:10
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JesseK JesseK is offline
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Re: Aerial Robots?

Having built my own quad (using the 3DRobotics kit and soldering the boards myself) I can say that I seriously doubt we'll see quadrotors as an official game object in FRC.

It may be feasible to attempt a tethered tri-rotor or quadrotor as an extension of the main bot, but typically the extension rules (e.g. 84" total cyllinder, 14" outside 1 bumper, etc) would cause more effort to be put into active tether management, further complicating overall robot design.

Quads also have an inherent safety risk. If a motor shaft is bent by even less than half a degree, the corresponding propeller will eventually fatigue and shatter, with shards of plastic/fiberglass going in all directions. Thus not only would inspectors need to see balanced props and vibration-free shafts, they'd probably also want a shroud around the propeller region -- adding weight that reduces the effectiveness of having a quadrotor to begin with.

Finally, quads (even the micro-motor quads) can use a TON of battery juice just hovering while carrying a load. My fully-loaded quad could hover in my basement for just 5 minutes using a 30C 3500mAh 3-cell LiPo -- and that's with >90% efficient outboard brushless motors. The FRC battery and motors are much less efficient, so we would need a very ideal game piece & scenario for quads to be of much use.

If you want to get into quadrotors as a hobby, save your pennies and buy a real quadrotor, not that parrot crap. http://www.diydrones.com
Get the $99 900Mhz telemetry kit and you'll be able to fly it using your laptop, FRC-style. All-told, including batteries, charger, telemetry, quad rotor kit, some spare motors/props, and some extra tooling I'd say I've spent roughly $750 for something programmable and customizable to suit what I want to do. The bucket list includes some autonomous maneuvers that the Parrot couldn't dream of doing, and also some custom controls for flight since I don't like their joystick interface.
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Last edited by JesseK : 10-09-2012 at 09:16.