Hydrogen-Powered Drone Can Fly For 4 Hours at a Time 116
stowie writes: The Hycopter uses its frame to store energy in the form of hydrogen instead of air. With less lift power required, its fuel cell turns the hydrogen in its frame into electricity to power its rotors. The drone can fly for four hours at a time and 2.5 hours when carrying a 2.2-pound payload. “By removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development - we opened up a whole new category in the drone market, in-between battery and combustion engine systems,” says CEO Taras Wankewycz.
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No, because it actually consumes the frame of drone as it flies, as part of extracting the hydrogen from it. So it's a fly-once deal.
Yes, but... (Score:3)
...it's not furry.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
--
BMO
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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removed the design silos (Score:2)
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Apparently he's from one of those bizarro twilight zone parallel universes where people actually read the article before they comment.
Please? (Score:5, Insightful)
This particular one is a little RC aircraft with a new, different fuel source.
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So? You put an "autonomous drone" electronics package instead of an "RC aircraft" electronics package, and it's a hydrogen-powered drone. Maybe a little less range because the drone electronics are heavier and consume more power.
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"So? You put an "autonomous drone" electronics package instead of an "RC aircraft" electronics package, and it's a hydrogen-powered drone. Maybe a little less range because the drone electronics are heavier and consume more power."
Hardly. RC ones have to stay in line of sight by law.
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So every toy RC aircraft ever can be referred to as a 'drone'?
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Yes.
Bullshit (Score:1)
http://www.icao.int/Meetings/UAS/Documents/Circular%20328_en.pdf
ICAO specifically uses the term "Unmanned Aircraft System" and "Remotely Piloted Aircraft". Go read the glossary on the above link and stop spewing your bullshit.
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I think this is about the "Unmanned aerial vehicle" wiki page, stating: "An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), known in the mainstream as a drone and also referred to as an unpiloted aerial vehicle and a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard."
So "drone" is not there as it's not official language or either wiki is wrong.
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Go read up on a little military aircraft history and learn how many *decades* remotely piloted target aircraft have been referred to as "drones".
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Please...can we stop using 'drone' unless/until it is actually autonomous?
"Drone" does not necessarily mean autonomous. It just means it is not controlled by direct line of sight. An R/C is controlled by looking at the aircraft. A drone can be autonomous or it can be controlled by looking at the realtime output from the on-board camera.
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no
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
words drift in meaning all the time. nobody owns a language. what a word means is pretty much what people use it for. that's the only rule
as RC aircraft, especially quadcopters, have exploded in popularity, the term drone has come into common use to refer to this burgeoning sector
therefore, drone is a perfectly acceptable term now for this new generation of RC aircraft definition. no other authority needed, because there is no authority at all
neither you nor anyone else ca
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The word "drone" originates from year 1127 "drane", referring to a male honeybee. "Drone" appeared in 1475, meaning "a deep continuous humming sound".
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exactly, thank you for the demonstration
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Plutonium Thermal-Electric? (Score:1)
Given the energy density of plutonium 238, a drone powered by a few grams could theoretically keep airborne and operational for years at a time.
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Hmm, flying RTG powered device.
What could possibly go wrong? I mean it works for NASA.
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Plutonium RTG's are safe enough to use inside the human body. Unfortunately they are very expensive to make & very difficult to licence. For a drone a bigger problem is that the energy output per unit weight is to low to actually power a flying machine.. It would be possible using a small RTG to charge a larger secondary Lithium Ion battery to fly the drone - but pretty pointless. (Cycle : sits for 10 hours charging then fly's for 10 minutes.)
No half measures (Score:2)
Why not an RC Zeppelin with nuclear RTG powered fans, that also uses excess power to generate replacement hydrogen from ambient moisture.
Now THAT sucker would be up there forever. I'd live in one if I could.
Short half-life unfortunately (Score:3)
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Is that actually possible or is there a drawback like "it's way too heavy" or "there's lots of energy but it doesn't come out quickly" or something like that? I know nothing of how plutonium is used to actually generate electricity.
Re:Plutonium Thermal-Electric? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's way too heavy. An RTG needs a lot of metal to work, encapsulation of the plutonium, radiators, and it needs size - there has to be a temperature differential for it to work, and for that you need a certain amount of distance to dissipate the heat across.
And it's way too inefficient. The RTG used on the Voyager Probes [wikipedia.org] produced about 2400 Watts of thermal power, which was enough for 157W of electricity. The total weight of the device was 37.7 kg. This Parrot drone [flyingtoys.com] consumes 14.5 W when hovering, so even if RTGs scaled in a linear manner (which is optimistic), a large enough unit would be larger than the payload capacity.
The hydrogen tank in the structural members carries 120g of fuel. You could extend the longevity of the thing enormously by fitting a secondary fuel tank as part of that 1kg payload you're allowed.
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Agree. RTGs aren't actually all that efficient - they're a very primitive form of nuclear power. Their advantage is in their simplicity and longevity, which makes them great for things like spacecraft that need low power for VERY long duration, and where repairs are impossible.
You'd need a pretty big aircraft before nuclear turns into a viable option.
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Theres two ways to make electricity from radionuclides.
One is to just have a lump of radioactive material and let it decay. Then you capture (some of) the decay energy either thermally (radioisotope thermal generator) or electrically (beta-voltaic generator). Upsides are it's simple and it scales down pretty well. Downside is that the efficiency is very poor and so is the power to weight. Usefull if you want a little bit of power for a long time. Probablly not suitable for a UAV.
The other is to go in for a
Yes! (Score:2)
I remember sketching/doodling a hydrogen balloon with a fuel-cell panel stitched into it when I was in 9th grade. Of course, I didn't know much about the practicalities of fuel cells -- just that I probably couldn't afford the platinum it would require. And this was pre-TRS-80, so about the only thing it would have done autonomously was go up until it used up its hydrogen, then come down.
In Comparison to... (Score:4, Informative)
The article says 4 hours is a lot longer than other drones out there... but how much are we talking about? How long can a lithium ion powered drone stay in the air?
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The article says 4 hours is a lot longer than other drones out there... but how much are we talking about? How long can a lithium ion powered drone stay in the air?
From what I have seen, somewhere between 30 seconds and 5 minutes.
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Re:In Comparison to... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're better off using lithium polymer. Flight time depends heavily on the speed of the motors, the weight of the frame and the size of the propellers. Mini quads run for 5-10 minutes while larger quads can run for 20-30 minutes.
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It doesn't take very long to swap a battery pack either. I wonder how the cost having a charging rack and enough battery packs that you always have a charged one compares to the cost of having a source of hydrogen for refueling.
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Why not follow the links (Score:2)
The website [www.hus.sg] you get following the "hydrocopter" link in the article states pretty clearly:
HYCOPTER is being readied for a record flight endurance of 4 hours, or 8 to 10 times the average flight duration of equivalent systems today.
Which is about right based on even high-end drones consumers use today.
The links are a lie. (Score:2)
That is not - quite - true.
However, they nowhere I have found have an actual picture of this thing in flight, or a video.
Then there is the fact that if you actually follow the links, they say something problematic.
The vehicles weight is 4kg.
The hover power is 400W.
This is very low for the weight.
Low power isn't purely a good thing.
Lower power implies a much lower 'exhaust speed' for the fans, and consequentially, much worse handling in wind.
If you rip out the (say) 1.5kg of fuel cell and extra structure to
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How long can a lithium ion powered drone stay in the air?
97 minutes, 6 seconds for this one [diydrones.com].
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Actually it's 129 minutes 15 seconds done in january 2014 by EndOfDays, originally posted on RCGroups. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpost.php?p=27208495&postcount=2231
I'm sure there are professionally built "drones" with longer flight times, but this is pretty much what can be achieved with COTS parts today, problaby a bit longer with newer battery technology and COTS parts.
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How long can a lithium ion powered drone stay in the air?
If the drone is a hydrogen filled dirigible then I'm betting quite a while.
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Sweet! Your Very Own Hindendrone! (Score:1)
Light up the entertainment with this explosively awesome new toy!
Doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
I can use hydrogen to keep an aircraft aloft much longer than that. The trick is don't burn it.
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Yep, Hindenburg got it wrong. If they only knew your trick...
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Yep, Hindenburg got it wrong. If they only knew your trick...
Nice try, but that was one disaster in an amazingly long history of safe operation considering the volatility of hydrogen. A number of airships were shot down during WWI and some perished in inclement weather but in peace time airship losses weren't unusually high compared to contemporary heavier than air aviation technology. If you replace the hydrogen with helium, install powerful modern engines and computerized control systems and try to resist the temptation of overflying the Great Plains during the he
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http://www.airships.net/hydrog... [airships.net]
It is very hard for me to get exact numbers in few minutes, but we would need to compare amount of people transported by dirigibles/number of deaths to amount of people transported by planes/number of deaths. I have no doubts that more people died in airplane crashes over all time, but at same time I feel that number of people who survived plane flights will anyway make this ratio better by orders of magnitude.
Big part of it might be due to maturity of technology - if we had
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Re:Photograph is fake, wires missing (Score:5, Informative)
That's got propellers, and its go tubes, but no wires so its not a drone, its crude mockup.
It might even be just a rendering of pipes and propellers even, certainly not an engineering rendering.
I assume they'll try to crowd fund it without a working prototype?
From this link Hycopter Runs Off Fuel Cells [ubergizmo.com] it has a wonderful little bit of design data:
The intelligent design involved in the Hycopter would allow it to stash 120 grams (4.2 oz) of hydrogen gas at 350 bar (5,076 psi) in its current structural tubing, and this means that there would be no need for any kind of separate canister.
5000psi?!?!??! Seriously?!?!? (and there is a religious joke in there as well) I'm not buying that until I see the damn thing fly. Oh and BTW
The refillable tubes will eventually be made from polymer-lined 5 mm-thick carbon fiber tubing as opposed to clear acrylic that is part of the pictured display model. It is touted that that amount of hydrogen ought to be able to deliver a similar amount of energy as 3 kg (6.6 lb) of lithium batteries.
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ok, so instead of a safely-powered gasoline drone, which is flammable, we'd have an explosive drone that crazies are tempted to shoot at out their window using pellet guns. poof! there goes someone's amazon delivery!
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This is a pipe dream. Hydrogen is a crappy energy storage medium. High pressures make it dangerous and as the AC points out, PEM fuel cells have crappy power production rates. I'll be amazed if we ever see anything flying.
Fizz (Score:1)
Call me when you have a Mentos and Coke powered drone.
Oh, by the way, the wind-powered drone has been around for very long time: https://youtu.be/5eAbMJuqHZA [youtu.be]
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Make a hollow propeller mounted on a pen tube, with a hole at each end of the prop (facing opposite directions, to drive the prop). Push pen tube through 2 liter bottle cap (loosely fitting in the hole), cut tube short, flare end to retain. Fill bottle with mentos and coke as usual and cap.
Might work, might not. Haven't tried it, but you could work out the bugs (bubbles?) pretty cheap.
5,076 psi (Score:1)
What the article tends to gloss over is that the 4 hour supply of hydrogen will be compressed at 350 bar (5,076 psi). By comparison scuba diving tanks are rated at a lower 200 to 300 bars (2,900 to 4,400 psi). You simply don't mess around with gas stored at this pressure.
So while the concept model optimistically refers to using "existing structural tubing" it will be more realistically a very heavy, high pressure, purpose built gas cylinder strapped to a an existing structural quad copter. Plus the addit
RTFA (Score:2)
The article has a picture of the CURRENTLY WORKING drone. It doesn't have large tanks of anything, it has two small tubes of hydrogen.
I think you have greatly miscalculated the pressures needed by this system. It's not storing pounds of the stuff, just 4oz or so across two fairly large tubes...
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just 4oz or so across two fairly large tubes...
It's bullshit, just do the math:
Even if pressurized at 5100 PSI, Hydrogen's density is only 25 grams/liter. 4 ounces is ~113 grams. That means you'd need ~4.5 liters.
Even if you assume that they built some super-material of incredibly strong plastic, do you really think each of those tubes contains more volume than a 2-liter soda bottle?
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The article is misleading - if you click through to the website, the actual video of the thing shows the prototype shows the tubes as ~1m long.
The volume is about right.
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Those are some miraculous tubes. At a meter long, that's 6cm in diameter.
At 5076psi, I get 22,700 pounds of axial tension plus 12,000 pounds transverse tension (per inch of length). Checking a section of the pipe yields 3060 pounds axial and 6000 pounds transverse on an inch by inch element. That's 6735 pli rotated 63 degrees from the axis. Using rational factors of safety (usu ~4 for CF composites, 1.6-2.0 for isotropics), I get 1/4" wall 7075-T651 high strength aluminum or 5/32" wall carbon fiber in an o
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Maynard Hill did this in 2003. Except 38 hours. (Score:1)
http://www.progressiveengineer.com/profiles/maynardHill.htm
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Yes, that's why we drive electric cars now.
Well that's a danger word (Score:2)
When the authorities see the word "hydrogen" then that's immediately going to restrict where they can be flown. In the UK that's already not many places.
I expect that gasoline is probably even better... (Score:2)
... and any fool can make one with existing hobby motors.
Another thing I'd like to see someone try is use little hobby jet engines instead of four rotors.
Why? More compact size, I think the thrust might be higher, and they're probably more energy efficient if kept reved high for long periods of time. And that long rev state would be typical of a long distance flight.
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Why not one of those hobby turbines used as a generator?
This one:
http://www.mhzusa.com/MHZ-JetC... [mhzusa.com] ...has a gearbox for driving the driveshaft of a boat, but maybe it could be adapted to run a generator. The specs show 8kw of power output and I think this is the smallest one they sell. Some of the others have power output in excess of 10kw.
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As to response time... the current hobby motors might not be up to the challenge but gasoline engines handle rapid accelerations all the time. Internal combustion engines are prized for this specific feature.
I wonder if this is more of a gearing issue?
The issue with gasoline engines is that they don't like to literally stop and start. They like to idle and go. Electric motors are generally quite happy to go from a cold start to high activity.
4 hours of flight? (Score:2)
Maybe most hydrogen is expended in the first 30 minutes, and the residual hydrogen, lighter than air, will keep the drone afloat for another 3.5hrs?
2.2 lbs... or you mean 1 kg (Score:2)
"instead of air"? FTW? (Score:2)
FTW?
What drones are powered by air? Most are powered by electricity or hydrocarbon fuel.
I suppose one *could* be powered by compressed air. I know of none. (Yea, I'm sure somebody will find one, though, and link it here. They aren't common though.)
Horribly-written article. Suspect "Steve Crowe" ("author") is a bot. Link-bait.
"instead of air"??? (Score:2)
The Hycopter uses its frame to store energy in the form of hydrogen instead of air
This makes it sound like there are all kinds of quadcopters out there that are using air to store energy. This is news to me, although given the low density of compressed-air storage I'd be pretty surprised if it's true.
Anyone have any idea why anyone would say this, as opposed to "instead of batteries"?