Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:59 am
#1519443
I reckon it is safe enough, when compared to say an R22 which uses a reciprocating engine, and a rubber band to tie this to some very light rotors, and a skilful pilot needed.
The only thing that concerns me is that a quad design (albeit with 8 motors) if you lose an entire corner, then presumably the thing can't fly unless the flight control algorithms can handle that (I don't know what the chance of this is, but something like a goose could probably take out 2 motors).
Maybe a hexacopter (with 8 engines) design would provide better redundancy, or even an automatically deploying low altitude parachute. Actually, I wonder if you could use an airbag system (as in the mars rovers) if altitude was limited to say 400' AGL. With enough of these flying around our large cities, presumably they could coordinate between themselves and slot into 'drone airways'....
The technology is certainly advanced enough to do it these days, but I'd want multiple redundant flight control systems and no single point of failure.
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