You could build one of these:

Wouldn't want to crash too badly. It looks like that thing could easily cut you to pieces.

At least the guy took adequate precautions, I mean he is wearing a helmet.

And shorts.

And a tee shirt.

That umbrella thing to protect him from the rain is genius

In the first minute I was thinking, "if that can hover, it could just as easily lift him a long way into the sky", next thing he was 6 metres up...scary!

He seemed to have very little horizontal rotational control (yaw), and a lot of pendulum effect going on as well.

Here's what some german guy did in 2011. I really wouldn't want to be sitting above all those propellers like he does, but it does lift the center of gravity and prevent the pendulum effect.



And then in 2013 he made a proper 2-seater with a pod.

.be

If there's a pilot then it's no longer a drone. But a lot of potential none the less.

What is rather humorous:


Many of the first helicopters had multi rotors to avoid the torque induced yaw from a single rotor. It is not like multi's are a new thing.

Now we have gone so far, we can make a helicopter (the most unstable thing ever) fly itself as a drone. That's amazing.

But then people put all the drone bits together to make a big one that a man can fly and woot and clap hands and congratulate themselves - but they have just invented 1940's tech - a multirotor man lifter

^^^ except, those early man lifters didn't work. They never got past some clunky prototypes and the pages of Popular Science, despite having huge streams of funding from the US military. The only multi-rotor choppers that are still around are some heavy load lifters and even those are rare.

The modern versions work far better than the early prototypes and are put together by a bunch of uni students.

What is ironic is that the early versions could probably have worked ok if they whacked a bunch of vacuum cleaner motors into a frame with some little propellors on top and a great long extension cord.

Possibly more ironic is they couldn't make multi-rotor helicopters work properly so they ended up with the conventional helicopter, the most fiendishly complicated machines you could imagine.

Think about this, "We have a problem with yawing. What can we do?" "I know. Lets put a little propeller on the end of a big stick and have it push the yawing body back the other way. That'll work."

PS Where's my fckuing jet pack!!!!! (although we now have paragliders and speed wings and acro and all that)

^^^ I am not thinking the ridiculously early home made things. I am talking Chinook, Yak24 etc (which were really late 40's tech)

My point being multicopters are good for small applications and UAV. As soon as you want to lift peeps and go somewhere, it is getting a bit silly to do it with 24 motors. Can appreciate the fun of building one but the real world applications are limited.

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da vecta said..
If there's a pilot then it's no longer a drone. But a lot of potential none the less.

That is not that easy distinction. If could be most likely passenger in the drone.
In the nearest future, once we have technical problems solved.
Even if giving direction , it will be more like taxi passenger; drone will fly automatically,
Anyway it will be much safer that give people driving wheel and sticks to operate in the air, since they never master that skills on the ground driving cars.
I would rather trust drone navigated by iPhone then another amateur pilot.

I though the most amazing thing was,.. about half way through the vid, two people walked past in the background,.. and kept walking past!
What does it take these days to catch someones attention to the extent that they might stop and watch for five minutes?

If it was me, having seen it in the distance I would have run up to watch and watched until they either packed it away or crashed.
Either of those would persuade me that I had probably seen the lot and it was now ok to leave.

It reminds me of long ago when I had a small hydrogen balloon and wondering how much appreciation the cat would have of a scientific revelation, I put the balloon in front of the cat so it could plainly see it, and then let it go. It went up.
Was the cat impressed? Not at all. It didn't even bother to watch it go up. It just wandered off.

Now I can understand that from a cat because the balloon wasn't edible.
But people? Surely they should be more appreciative of such technical magnificence than a cat!
People! I dunno.

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da vecta said..
If there's a pilot then it's no longer a drone. But a lot of potential none the less.

They're not even drones without a pilot, they're just a different type of remote control aircraft. They only become drones when an automated way-point navigation and control system is added, and this can just as well be added to a remote control plane as it can to a remote control quadcopter.

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Harrow said..

when an automated way-point navigation and control system is added, and this can just as well be added to a remote control plane as it can to a remote control quadcopter.

or missile....
All this real cheap self steering thru the air stuff does not bode well for us when the wrong sorts decide to make something that can fly to a point carrying a payload.

But hey, if it looks shiny, has somethign to do with wi-fi, the internet, looks like apple made it, then it must be good. As you were.

The first vid is a typical Pom thing to do. The Backyard Boffin showing how smart he is. What he ultimately wants to do is fly it over the English Channel.

Then of course the Kraut will feel challenged by this and will want to fly his over the Alps.

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Mark _australia said..
My point being multicopters are good for small applications and UAV. As soon as you want to lift peeps and go somewhere, it is getting a bit silly to do it with 24 motors.

More importantly, with both a plane and a helicopter, you have a chance at landing if you lose power. Once a multicopter loses power for whatever reason, it drops like a brick. Not to mention the series failure probability of so many different components making this a ridiculously risky method of human flight.

You'd never want to be more than a few feet off the ground in one of these. I still want one though.

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pweedas said..
I put the balloon in front of the cat so it could plainly see it, and then let it go. It went up.
Was the cat impressed? Not at all. It didn't even bother to watch it go up. It just wandered off.

your cat is defective,

our moggie has been taking our grandson on search and destroy missions for hovering birthday balloons.

anyone got a spare tank of helium.......

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Mark _australia said..

Harrow said..

when an automated way-point navigation and control system is added, and this can just as well be added to a remote control plane as it can to a remote control quadcopter.

or missile....
All this real cheap self steering thru the air stuff does not bode well for us when the wrong sorts decide to make something that can fly to a point carrying a payload.

But hey, if it looks shiny, has somethign to do with wi-fi, the internet, looks like apple made it, then it must be good. As you were.

Can you flip them upside down and have them do the edges in the backyard?