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Looking for input and ideas

R.Perry

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Coulterville, CA
One thing about retirement is it give one a lot of time to think, can be good or not so good. One of my neighbors and fellow member of our church I found out is a retired electrical engineer and computer guru. We had lunch and got talking about drones and some of the FAA restrictions and making them safer.

So we have decided to build a drone, that will incorporate a stop motor feature and a parachute and an inflatable bladder. The electrical and computer is way beyond me, but he says it would be easy.

I think a six-motor drone would most likely be the most efficient. My goal isn’t so much about the drone, as it is about making a drone that can easily be rendered the least harmful as possible to anyone on the ground. As we talked it was thought that the drone would have two ways of entering motor shutdown and chute and bladder deploy. One being loss of contact with the controller, secondly being controller initiated. He told me it would be easy (for him) to develop monitoring software that would constantly monitor the actions of the drone and if it was responding to inputs from the controller properly.

The other issue would be autonomous flight failure and how to deal with that other than hopefully disengaging and taking control.

We have two options, start from scratch or modify an existing drone. I volunteered my P4P for a prototype but he feels it wiser to start from scratch.

I know there are some very knowledgeable folks on this forum and would love to here some ideas. We also have available to us a retired machinist with a machine shop, and a gopher (me) with some decent mechanical skills. The three of us are prepared to make a significant financial contribution to the endeavor.
 
I'm no designer but have some "Old School"programming background....

I'd think you'd be better served starting from scratch with an Open Source controller that would allow you to define the functions and mechanisms you want/need.
 
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Good ideas going on there but I disagree with the system deploying upon loss of link with the controller. Auto return to home is usually better in that case.

Lost links are more frequent than power failures, and if my drone has plenty of battery and drops into parachute mode upon a lost link, the system would be a total no go for me and I think many others.

The inflatable bladder is something I haven't seen. Maybe focusing on just designing that aspect to mount to any drone that can carry it would have a bigger market, involve less design and be easier to have some big company come in later and buy you out.
 
Good ideas going on there but I disagree with the system deploying upon loss of link with the controller. Auto return to home is usually better in that case.

Lost links are more frequent than power failures, and if my drone has plenty of battery and drops into parachute mode upon a lost link, the system would be a total no go for me and I think many others.

The inflatable bladder is something I haven't seen. Maybe focusing on just designing that aspect to mount to any drone that can carry it would have a bigger market, involve less design and be easier to have some big company come in later and buy you out.

As far as parachutes there are several systems out there and most of them use Fruitychutes parachutes. The other companies just use proprietary chute launchers to deploy a Fruitychute. Most, if not all, of them have a setup that if the chute deploys the motors stop.
 
One thing about retirement is it give one a lot of time to think, can be good or not so good. One of my neighbors and fellow member of our church I found out is a retired electrical engineer and computer guru. We had lunch and got talking about drones and some of the FAA restrictions and making them safer.

So we have decided to build a drone, that will incorporate a stop motor feature and a parachute and an inflatable bladder. The electrical and computer is way beyond me, but he says it would be easy.

I think a six-motor drone would most likely be the most efficient. My goal isn’t so much about the drone, as it is about making a drone that can easily be rendered the least harmful as possible to anyone on the ground. As we talked it was thought that the drone would have two ways of entering motor shutdown and chute and bladder deploy. One being loss of contact with the controller, secondly being controller initiated. He told me it would be easy (for him) to develop monitoring software that would constantly monitor the actions of the drone and if it was responding to inputs from the controller properly.

The other issue would be autonomous flight failure and how to deal with that other than hopefully disengaging and taking control.

We have two options, start from scratch or modify an existing drone. I volunteered my P4P for a prototype but he feels it wiser to start from scratch.

I know there are some very knowledgeable folks on this forum and would love to here some ideas. We also have available to us a retired machinist with a machine shop, and a gopher (me) with some decent mechanical skills. The three of us are prepared to make a significant financial contribution to the endeavor.
Hydrogen Fuel Cell would be very nice.
 
Good ideas going on there but I disagree with the system deploying upon loss of link with the controller. Auto return to home is usually better in that case.

Lost links are more frequent than power failures, and if my drone has plenty of battery and drops into parachute mode upon a lost link, the system would be a total no go for me and I think many others.

The inflatable bladder is something I haven't seen. Maybe focusing on just designing that aspect to mount to any drone that can carry it would have a bigger market, involve less design and be easier to have some big company come in later and buy you out.

We were talking about that today, you are correct about not shutting down just due to loss of controller link. The bladder idea came about for two reasons, lessen impact on landing and to protect the camera. I do know there are parachute options out there and we don't wish to reinvent the wheel. The primary idea is to lessen potential injury to anyone that my be struck by it. I was out at our local airport today and one of the guys there is a FAA examiner, been around for ever seems like. He wasn't sure, but he believes that by next year there will be some major changes on the commercial end includiing potential physical and vision standards.
 
We were talking about that today, you are correct about not shutting down just due to loss of controller link. The bladder idea came about for two reasons, lessen impact on landing and to protect the camera. I do know there are parachute options out there and we don't wish to reinvent the wheel. The primary idea is to lessen potential injury to anyone that my be struck by it. I was out at our local airport today and one of the guys there is a FAA examiner, been around for ever seems like. He wasn't sure, but he believes that by next year there will be some major changes on the commercial end includiing potential physical and vision standards.

If you could come up with a way to have inflatable bags to turn the drone into a balloon for a softer landing that would be like Elon Musk cool.

Something like this Mars lander animation

Drone airbags. :)
 
We were talking about that today, you are correct about not shutting down just due to loss of controller link. The bladder idea came about for two reasons, lessen impact on landing and to protect the camera. I do know there are parachute options out there and we don't wish to reinvent the wheel. The primary idea is to lessen potential injury to anyone that my be struck by it. I was out at our local airport today and one of the guys there is a FAA examiner, been around for ever seems like. He wasn't sure, but he believes that by next year there will be some major changes on the commercial end includiing potential physical and vision standards.
You might want to contact Splash Drone via Urban Drone. Here and here are links to inflatable "bladder" products. You might also want to consider an Open Source hexacopter design with a frame like this.
 
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We have shifted focus a little and are starting from scratch. We have decided to also take on the transponder idea. Gim built a small tansponder that can transmit the drones ID, altitude, and location, and uses very little power. We are still going to incorporate the parachute and bladder, but from what I think is in the wind is the government is eventually going to want some sort of transponder in drones. He feels this could also transmit to aircraft collision avoidance systems.
I've installed it on my Phantom, but it isn't transmitting on any aviation frequencies. I took the P4 up to 400 feet and out as far as I could see it and we had a good signal. I haven't tested it enough to evaluate battery flight time.
There are plenty of options for a parachute, and bladder, another issue is added weight and keeping the CG right so one motor isn't working harder than others. I added 8oz to the top of the P4 to see how it would react, it flew ok, but did have an negative effect on battery discharge rate. Prototype will definitely be a six motor bird and dual batteries like the Inspire.
Another thought was to go to a third small battery for the transmitter.
 

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