{"id":128447,"date":"2021-10-02T12:23:06","date_gmt":"2021-10-02T19:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/3d-printed-vtol-craft-can-land-and-recharge-itself-and-team-up-with-other-drones"},"modified":"2021-10-02T12:23:06","modified_gmt":"2021-10-02T19:23:06","slug":"3d-printed-vtol-craft-can-land-and-recharge-itself-and-team-up-with-other-drones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/10\/3d-printed-vtol-craft-can-land-and-recharge-itself-and-team-up-with-other-drones","title":{"rendered":"3D Printed VTOL Craft Can Land And Recharge Itself, And Team Up With Other Drones"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/3d-printed-vtol-craft-can-land-and-recharge-itself-and-team-up-with-other-drones3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For a long time fixed wing VTOL drones were tricky to work with, but with the availability of open source flight control and autopilot software this has changed. To make experimentation even easier, [Stephen Carlson] and other researchers from the RoboWork Lab at the University of Nevada created the <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.io\/project\/175286-minihawk-vtol\" target=\"_blank\">MiniHawk, a 3D printed VTOL aircraft<\/a> for use a test bed for various research projects.<\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pVbJudrOTGY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Some of these project include <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=pVbJudrOTGY\" target=\"_blank\">creating a longer wingspan aircraft<\/a> by combining multiple MiniHawks in mid-flight with magnetic wing-tip mounts, or \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=4dkRgB-qfwM\" target=\"_blank\">migratory behaviors<\/a>\u201d. The latter is a rather interesting idea, which involves letting the craft land in any suitable location, and recharging using wing mounted solar panels before continuing with the next leg of the mission. With this technique, the MiniHawk could operate on mission almost indefinitely without human intervention. This is a departure from some <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/10\/09\/soaring-with-the-sun-4-years-of-solar-rc-planes\/\">other solar planes<\/a> we\u2019ve seen, which attempt to recharge while flying, or even <a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2019\/10\/07\/tacking-against-the-sun-flying-a-batteryless-solar-rc-plane-is-almost-like-sailing\/\">ditch batteries completely<\/a>, which limits operation to sunny weather conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The design is open source, with all the relevant information and files available on <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/StephenCarlson\/MiniHawk-VTOL\" target=\"_blank\">GitHub<\/a>. This looks like a fun craft even if you don\u2019t plan on doing research with it, and [Stephen] also created an FPV specific canopy cover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For a long time fixed wing VTOL drones were tricky to work with, but with the availability of open source flight control and autopilot software this has changed. To make experimentation even easier, [Stephen Carlson] and other researchers from the RoboWork Lab at the University of Nevada created the MiniHawk, a 3D printed VTOL aircraft [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1488,6,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drones","category-robotics-ai","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}