Acrobatic Tricopter Inspired By The Oblivion Movie Trailer

tricopter

There have been a ton of commercials for the new [Tom Cruise] movie called Oblivion. One of the main points in every clip we remember seeing is the Top Gun meets Star Trek vehicle he does some tricks in. [James Cotton] loved that footage and ended up building his own RC version of the vehicle.

Three propellers give it lift, with directional control facilitated by servo motors which can pivot the motors attached to the two orange propellers. This design produces remarkably responsive controls as shown in the video after the break. That being said it’s still not immune to operator error. At the end of the clip [James] crashes it hard, stripping out the gears on the servo motors.

He has a few things in mind for the future of the device (and he’ll have plenty of time to plan while he waits for replacement servos to arrive). The aircraft should be able to carry a camera long with it. He discusses the issues involved with where the camera ends up pointing based on what the tilting motors are doing. But we figure he could always build a base that lets the camera pan and tilt separately from the chassis.

You can find a few tricopter projects around here but we’ve always like the one made of cardboard.

28 thoughts on “Acrobatic Tricopter Inspired By The Oblivion Movie Trailer

  1. Haha, sorry about the crappy video. I’ll try and shoot another when it’s fixed and post it here.

    @mrxavia – i think the coolest thing would be a variable pitch prop on the back so then it can fly with the tail straight up or down.

  2. Could use a bamboo skewer as a sacrificial linkage that saves the servo gears by breaking first. small cheep easily replaceable easer to get a hold of than servos. it also may have a torsional rotation that allows bending instead of breaking. Similar to F1 rear suspension system.

  3. I really like it, it should be able to hover very steady if the microcontroller can deal with them and make small adjustments because then you have 3 servos and 3 motors and if they’re all in sync it should be able to correct itself in a very agile way!
    Its a shame those mounts are so big and heavy! A lighter alternative wouldn’t be a bad idea.. for protection see this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0biXFNXYNnM

  4. Sorry about the crappy video. I’ll take a better one once it is repaired.

    @Geebles yeah i agree, the mounts are way too heavy :( i need to set up some bearings with a cantilever system – i just couldn’t find any bearing for the 450 tubes. Sparky works really well for stabilizing it. I just got the stuff to flash the ESCs which should tighten it up.

    What I’m really excited to try is adding a VPP to the tail so it can to a handstand or keep the tail down. I like the idea of the ball actually for that – cause then it can site on teh ground hanging within it’s cage.

  5. Sorry about the crappy video. I’ll take a better one once it is repaired.

    @Geebles yeah i agree, the mounts are way too heavy :( i need to set up some bearings with a cantilever system – i just couldn’t find any bearing for the 450 tubes. Sparky works really well for stabilizing it. I just got the stuff to flash the ESCs which should tighten it up.

    What I’m really excited to try is adding a VPP to the tail so it can to a handstand or keep the tail down. I like the idea of the ball actually for that – cause then it can site on teh ground hanging within it’s cage.

  6. Nice build site and project, but terrible video (way too busy a background so most of the video is nothing more then looking at his backyard with something tiny buzzing around it).

  7. I dont think he would need to tilt the camera to control its pitch. I think he has enough control to control the copters pitch and fly in any direction. I think that’s the whole point of the design. If the props were fixed, he could not control the independently, but because they can rotate, he should be able to use that to control the camera/coptor pitch.

    1. Man, that’s a really good idea. It might be hard to find one that is light, but with a servos in the center design that would be brilliant for surviving crashes.

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