Hylium touts useful features like the short five-minute refueling time. Details are scant, but the company has gone to some lengths to build out the product beyond a simple tech demonstrator, too. ![]() ![]() Thanks to the energy density advantage of hydrogen versus lithium batteries, the flight time can be greatly extended compared to conventional battery-only drones. The drone uses a hydrogen fuel cell to provide electricity to run the drone’s motors and other electronic systems. A company called Hylium hopes to change all that with a hydrogen-powered drone that can fly for up to five hours. The vast majority run on lithium rechargeable batteries, with corresponding limits on flight time. Multirotor drones have become a regular part of daily life, serving as everything from camera platforms to inspection tools and weapons of war. Posted in drone hacks, Raspberry Pi Tagged compute module 4, fixed-wing, flight computer, quadcopter, raspberry pi, sandbox, uav, unmanned aerial vehicle While the flight computer is fairly capable of controlling various autonomous aircraft, whether it’s a multi-rotor like a quadcopter or a fixed wing device, you might need a little more computing power if you want to build something more complicated. And with a weight of only 30 grams, it won’t take too much cargo space on most UAVs. Separating non-critical tasks like cameras and telemetry from the more important flight controls has a number of benefits as well, including improved reliability and simpler software and program design. The system itself supports dual HD camera input as well as additional support for other USB devices, and also includes an electronic speed controller mezzanine which has support for quadcopters and fixed wing crafts. These have a number of valuable tools available for unmanned flight, such as setting up a long range telemetry and camera links. This means that the Pi is completely sandboxed from the flight control code, freeing up computing power on the Pi and allowing it to run a UAV-specific OS like OpenHD or RubyFPV. The advantage of this board compared to other similar offerings is that it is built to host a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, while the rest of the flight controllers are separated out onto a single circuit board. Thankfully this one carries a dizzying quantity of computer power for an absolute minimum of weight, and has some clever design considerations to improve its performance as well. Every gram saved means less energy needed to keep the aircraft aloft and ultimately more time in the air, but unmanned vehicles often need to compromise some on weight in order to carry increased computing abilities. When building autonomous airborne vehicles like drones or UAVs, saving a little bit of weight goes a long way, literally. Either way, we like the simplification of the flight control system and translating the driving metaphor into flying - it seems like that’ll be something we need if we’re ever to have full-size flying cars.Ĭontinue reading “Fly Like You Drive With This Flying RC Drift Car” → Posted in drone hacks Tagged dRehmFlight, drift car, drone, esc, flight controller, open source, quadcopter, rc, uav We have to admit that ’s creation looks like a lot of fun to fly, or drive - whichever way you want to look at it. And the video below shows it doing a really good job of it, for the most part - with anything as complicated as the multiple control loops needed to keep this thing in the air, it’s easy for a sudden input to confuse things. The lidar is used to relieve the operator of the burden of altitude keeping by holding the drone at about a meter or so off the deck. Rather than use the standard two-joystick remote, rejiggered his dRehmFlight open-source flight control software to make operating the drone less like flying and more like driving. The big giveaway, though, is the RC car-style remote used to fly the drone. Other subtle clues include the belly-mounted lidar and nose-mounted FPV camera, although those aren’t exactly unknown on standard UAVs. The main difference is the pusher prop at the aft, which provides forward thrust without having to pitch the entire craft. ![]() But the design has subtle differences that make it more like a car without wheels. So it’s 2023, and you really feel like we should have flying cars by now, right? Well, as long as you ignore the problem of scale presented by ’s flying RC drift car, we pretty much do.Īt first glance, ’s latest build looks pretty much like your typical quadcopter.
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