Admit it. You’d get through boring classes in school by daydreaming of cool things you’d like to build. If you were like us, some of them were practical, but some of them were flights of fancy. Did you ever think of an airplane that could dive under the water? We did. So did some students at Aalborg University. The difference is they built theirs. Watch it do its thing in the video below.
As far as we can tell, the drone utilizes variable-pitch props to generate lift in the air and downward thrust in water. In addition to the direction of the thrust, water operations require a lower pitch to minimize drag. We’d be interested in seeing how it is all waterproofed, and we’re unsure how deep the device can go. No word on battery life either. From the video, we aren’t sure how maneuverable it is while submerged, but it does seem to have some control. It wouldn’t be hard to add a lateral thruster to improve underwater operations.
This isn’t the first vehicle of its kind (discounting fictional versions). Researchers at Rutgers created something similar in 2015, and we’ve seen other demonstrations, but this is still very well done, especially for a student project.
We did see a submersible drone built using parts from a flying drone. Cool, but not quite the same.
Kind of cool, but unlike a diving seabird, which can adapt it’s means of propulsion more drastically, this is a quadcopter drone that’s neither optimized for air or water. Cool vario-pitch though.
I can’t see how its not as good as other quadcopters for flight. Plus comparing to a bird is a bit of a high bar no?
it carries more unnecessary junk, cutting down on flight time and the props arent efficient in their present iteration.
Don’t know why, but it reminds me of the internal combution engine drone (the one with chains between the engine and the propellers). Perhaps another branch on the evolution of man eating drones.
I missed that one. What a nightmare transmission design… One engine for all rotors? Or four motors with independent throttle?
With variable pitch there is no need for more than one power unit. The thrust is varied with the pitch. Also it may be the only way to fly a gasoline quadcopter, internal combustion engine throttles are definitely not responsive enough to be used.
Wouldn’t you loose yaw control with just one power unit? I thought yaw was controlled by changing the rpm ration between the counter-rotating pairs.
You can either alter RPM for a fixed prop or pitch for a variable incidence prop to get the same result
Look up ‘Goliath’, it was featured here some years ago… I think it never went beyond some initial hover tests.
Could we please stop giving Skynet ideas?
kkthxbye
I wonder how many feet of water it takes to squelch the radio control signal? Drone ELF?
My own submerged drone did not merit a feature on Hackaday.
It’s a Submacopter!
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1294
Pfft! I flew my drone under water years ago!
Still waiting for it to fly home.
Seems like the complexity of variable pitch is not a requirement for under water, motor controllers that can hand lower rpm may not be common. also see “stingray 500”, I think there was a nitro version as well.
I would be interested in trying out this concept with such motor controllers. Do you know of any?
Is there way to make the variable pitch control purely mechanical? eg. using something like CVT or centrifugal governor rather than servo? Maybe some spring that would lower the pitch when the torque starts being too high.