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.
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.