Fixed-wing planes and helicopters are no longer the darling of the RC world. Even quadcopters and other multirotors are starting to look old hat, as the community looks to ever more outrageous designs. [rctestflight] has slimmed things down to the extreme with this coaxial bicopter build, also known as the Flying Stick (Youtube video, embedded below).
The initial design consists of two brushless outrunner motors fitted with props, rotating in opposite directions to cancel out their respective torques. Each is mounted on a gimbal, setup to provide control authority. iNav is used as a flight controller, chosen due to its versatile motor mixing settings. The craft was built to test its ability at recovery from freefall, as a follow-on from earlier attempts at building a brushless “rocket” craft.
Performance is surprisingly good for what is fundamentally two props on a stick. Initial tests didn’t quite manage a successful recovery, but the repaired single-gimbal version almost achieves the feat. Multirotors in general struggle with freefall recovery, so more research in this area is definitely worthwhile. Video after the break.
In 2013, Lockheed Martin announced development of the successor to the SR-71 Blackbird spy plane.
The SR-71 was capable of reaching speeds over three times the speed of sound, and the SR-72 is intended to have even more impressive specs. Following is a transcript of the video.
BAE Systems has made aviation history by maneuvering the first aircraft in flight using supersonically blown air instead of ailerons or other control surfaces. Taking to the skies over Wales, the wing-shaped Magma UAV makes use of two new technologies that could revolutionize aircraft design.
If e-bikes tend to look a little ungainly for your tastes, check out this thing from Barcelona’s Nua Bikes. With the motor, sensors and battery built into a discreet hub unit, the Nua Electrica is barely distinguishable from a regular fixie, and its innovative “self-charging” mode means you can get away without ever charging it.
Artificial intelligence has been showing us many ish tricks as apers of human-created art, and now a team of researchers have impressed AI watchers with PaintBot. They have managed to unleash their AI as a capable mimic of the old masters.
AI can deliver a Van Gogh–ish, Vermeer–ish, Turner–ish painting. The team, from the University of Maryland, the ByteDance AI Lab and Adobe Research, turned an algorithm into a mimic of the old masters.
“Through a coarse-to-fine refinement process our agent can paint arbitrarily complex images in the desired style.”
Future residents of Paramount Miami World Center, a 600-unit condominium building now under construction, may be the first in the world with a private skyport for their use, television station WSVN reports.
Infrastructure matters. Flying cars will never, um, get off the ground if they don’t have places to land. Helicopter landing pads and heliports are apparent answers to the question of where to touch down. However, landing spots or sky ports built specifically for flying cars could offer convenience and amenities specifically applicable for or adapted to flying cars.
“Ever since ‘The Jetsons’ came out, America’s been talking about flying cars,” Daniel Kodsi, Paramount Miami World Center’s CEO and developer, said in a statement. “It’s something that inspires you, something that you think about when you’re building a project. You’re saying, ‘Well, what is the future? What’s going to happen in the future?’”
