What happens if one of the props fail?

Neat toy

Isn't that one the principles for the land speeders in Star Wars?

Back in the 1980s when Popular Mechanics was telling us that we'd each have one of these for our daily commutes by the year Two-Thousand, I remember them saying that even if one prop failed, you could manage a controlled landing with the remaining props, especially with computer assist.

These little guys have video cams on them. If they were night vision, you could spy on night time activities without being seen. I wonder what their range is.

About the same as in a helicopter I'd imagine...

That depends on whether all four props have one power source/motor or if they are individually powered. If it's the former, it crashes because it has no auto-rotation ability. If it's the latter and one fails, it probably crashes unless it can cut power to the opposite prop and still have enough on the remaining two to make a semi-controlled descent.

The difference is plummeting like a dead duck or like a wounded one.

Nifty little toy that goes on sale Sept. 9th @ Amazon for $300. It has a 12 minute flight time, but you can opt for extra batteries to keep charged and manually swap them out. Nekkid sunbathers beware...that fence is no longer an obstacle. It's WiFi, so if the signal is good, not much of problem with distance.

No, since there are four propellers which serve partially redundant functions. Lose one, and you still have three propellers serving partially redundant functions. By altering the outputs in just the right way, you could compensate for the loss of one enough for a controlled landing.

Interesting. The end of privacy?

Current traffic is 2 dimensional. Adding a 3d dimension has a whole different game plan. We'd need numerous cameras and sensors to see 'cars' above and below us in addition to all 4 directions in a plane.

controlled by an iPhone?

And edit to add - looks sorta like the helicopters in Avatar

Seems the ducted fan would be safer, more efficient than current helicopter systems?

Yep. Iphone or Ipod touch according to product info.

A nifty toy, but a little rich for my blood at $300 for the toy plus the cost of the Iphone or Ipod to control it. Pretty cool though.

I look at it this way:



PHOTO RECON.....

Tac Recce.... Gonna need FLIRTT (Forward Looking Infra Red Titty Tracking)

This could be really handy when scouting for deer...

I like the way you look at things.

There you go.

You do realize that props is plural for prop? Meaning many or all props.

Not sure what you mean. Can you elaborate on that?

Wonder how it would do in the wind? Might limit its usefulness outdoors

Twas one of my first thoughts.

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Hmmm, I wonder if that would violate the Alaska law against flying and hunting on the same day?

Are you sure they aren't using them now???

Nope. In fact we know they are using them now. Declassified many years ago. In fact we can read about it in the news papers. Ever hear of drones?

What I am meaning is that this new design can be thought of as more comparable to a helicopter than a conventional fixed wing aircraft.

Loosing a rotar on either this drone or a helo is "not good"; with a helo, you may or may not be able to have a semi controlled crash landing via the auto-gyro, while with the "drone" you may or may not have the ability to run on three engines for a period, but neither craft will glide to any degree like a plane might..

Obviously thats not going to be a show stopper for the new design, in the same way as its not a show stopper for helicopters just a "consideration" thats all...

It would be interesting to see if they could intergrate the four rotar idea into a sort of "flying wing" or saucer design although a similar saucer idea was tried by Avro Canada back in the 1950's.



More recently there was also the "sky car"



(Not sure whether the above photo is genuine or a mock-up for promotional purposes]