A few guys from Jobi Robotics came up with a really interesting RC plane called the Quadshot. With 4 motors, the plane is very similar to the quadcopter builds we’ve seen, but an added wing allows it to fly horizontally much faster than a pile of carbon fiber and electronics.
The VTOL ability of the plane reminds us of something we saw at the National Air & Space Museum a long time ago. The flight test footage of the Convair Pogo shows landings are troublesome to say the least, so we can appreciate how much work went into this build.
The Quadshot uses the Open-Source Paparazzi autopilot with onboard gyros to take a lot of work out of flying. Their autopilot board can also be switched from remote control to a UAV at the touch of a button. This might come in very handy when transitioning between vertical and horizontal flight modes.
The team has already built about a dozen prototypes, and they’re looking to cover tooling costs to manufacture the Quadshot with a Kickstarter campaign. The video posted on their Kickstarter page looks very cool. We’re looking forward to seeing the ‘quadcopter with a wing’ builds that the Quadshot will influence.
I fly rc planes a lot and have always thought about a VTOL plane. A very neat idea and good job on getting it to work +2
“Mashup” has got to be one of my least favorite internet memes. In audio, it is called a remix. In video, it is called an edit. When using things, it is a combination. When using people it is an orgy. Make sense?
On other sites “mashup” is often used to refer to a creation that someone does not want to pay copyright on because they are a starving artist/hipster. (Think Tshirts and the Obama “Hope” poster and Shepherd Fairey the talentless hack)
VTOL quadcopter is neat, terminology is not.
no video? no diagrams? no footage of this product? Is this just an idea? does it even fly? where’s the hack?
… after poking around, I found video on their Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/theQuadshot why is this hidden from their website? Strange
http://www.youtube.com/user/esdentem#p/u
Thanks for the initial hunting. Here’s the guy that seems to have uploaded all of their videos. Interesting stuff.
They videos aren’t hidden, there is a link to video at the top of the page. Plain as day. Unless it was added in the interim.
After seeing the video in the comment above, that is rather awesome. I’d recommend you edit it into the post. I want one. :D
Surely the wing undermines it’s ability as a quadrocoptor because it is going to be heavily affected by any amount of sidewind?
This thing is awesome! Does it actually fly?
I like the idea behind it, but it is a little too much plane and too less copter in this thing.
The hovering ability seems seriously impaired.
To enable high speed quadracopter flight a regular “square copter” could be equipped with a aerodynamic body to be used for uplift and still have enough performance left for some hovering acrobatics.
Isn’t the correct term for this a flying wing? I don’t believe I’ve seen this form factor for an RC car (and I know I haven’t seen it used in a VTOL configuration – neat idea!)
It looked like the motors might be a tad underpowered – they seemed to strain in the take-off. Optimizing the motors & blades for lift/thrust would probably help.
Nice but that wing is Far Far too big, If they want to take advantage of its VTOL capabilities then the wing should be much small (~10% by area) and only used in high speed flight. There wing is so big and they have soo much power that they could just STOL, in a reasonably small space. And having a wing that Big makes for a shitty Quad copter, see how it was being blown around in flight, and have you seen how manoeuvrable normal quad copters are, they are like something our of terminator. Basically my point is with a STOL aircraft your wing area is no longer set by your maximum landing speed, and you are free to set it based on your cruse speed, and so can carry much less drag and weight (and so even less drag). Notice how comparatively small the wings are on those corsair aircraft you linked to.
With a smaller wing this could fit in to a nice niche for surveillance, using the wing to extend range and speed between launch and the target, and then using the hover, and manoeuvrability of the quad-copter flight mode to observe Its target.
Clever, I was trying to come up with a way to make a flying wing / quadcopter hybrid and was thinking of all kinds of fancy contraptions to move the motors around to switch between VTOL(quad) mode and forward flight, but by simply sacrificing the ability to do traditional takeoffs and landings, this layout makes it very simple.