from Hacker News

B go beyond – Quadcopter/RC car combo

by neonkiwi on 5/24/13, 6:40 PM with 51 comments

• by bri3d on 5/24/13, 8:00 PM

  I wonder if there's an efficient mechanism to allow the hubless wheels to tuck up (rotate 90 degrees about the center) when the machine takes flight.

  The value could be twofold: the wheels could act as blade guards and the wheel would be outside of the prop's feed and wash airstream, which would probably lead to more desirable flight characteristics.

  Maybe something for Revision 2 - as is, this is a cute combination of existing ideas into a cool new machine.

• by vlasev on 5/24/13, 10:12 PM

  Here are a couple of ideas to make the video better

  1. Use a better microphone. The quality of your voice is not very good in the video.

  2. Don't keep re-using the computer generated shots, it gets somewhat annoying.

  Here are some ideas that could make for a better demo of B

  - Test the flying mode somewhere more interesting like in the city where there are multiple levels to reach with flying.

  - make it go from the first level of a house to the second level of a house by going outside of the window. It would be even more impressive on a higher building - go from the ground level to the roof level (and back).

• by salimmadjd on 5/24/13, 7:53 PM

  There are projects that you want to donate to just to show support for the creative mind for doing the seemingly impossible. This is one of them

• by jwr on 5/25/13, 10:02 AM

  What really worries me looking at this design is sand getting into the propeller motors. These need to be open because of cooling requirements (multicopter motors will burn out very quickly if you run them without airflow from the propeller). In this design they are very close to the ground and likely getting sand/earth thrown inside them as it gets kicked up from the ground by tires or as it gets transported upwards by tires and then falls off into the motors.

• by neonkiwi on 5/24/13, 6:45 PM

  At the beginning of this video I thought this was going to be a Kickstarter project where a non-functioning model is used to sell an idea... But this guy actually built this contraption! Very impressive.

  Are there spokeless wheels like that available as an off-the-shelf R/C component?

• by sbisker on 5/24/13, 7:47 PM

  I'm curious about the patent he mentions filing, for placing the quadrocopter blades inside of the wheel. I'm not familiar with this field - is that a novel contribution? If so, kudos to him for coming up with a simple invention I would have thought would be patented or in use already.

• by sdfjkl on 5/24/13, 9:20 PM

  This stands out not only for the great design, but also for being an extremely well put together Kickstarter campaign.

• by duked on 5/24/13, 8:16 PM

  It looks awesome ! It's an impressive piece of engineering.

  The price tag is a still a bit high for what I would use as a toy, but if you consider the potential "drone" spinoff that's a steal.

  The battery life is a bit limited "At the moment flying 11 min / driving up to 18 min, combined performance 15 min. "

• by Pyramids on 5/24/13, 11:00 PM

  I'm really surprised that an innovation which is seemingly very 'simple' has been overlooked by the RC community for so long, with that said though, I'm glad someone he's taking the initiative to actually build it. I've reserved mine.

  It might be worth noting for anyone who thinks this is intriguing, there is actually quite a community for FPV / RC copters. One of my favorite YouTube channels (once you get over the username) is http://www.youtube.com/user/nastycop420 which is 3 guys who go to different destinations around the world, fly quadcopters, and post the videos on YouTube.

• by pravda on 5/24/13, 10:26 PM

  Interesting and original-ish. But practical? Can't say.

  Here's a suggestion I'm going to throw out there. Instead of driving the wheel(s), use the propellers. When landing, at least two of the propellers pivot up and drive it around.

  (You could also be clever and pivot the motors up about 60-degrees, so that there is forward force and an upwards force that 'lightens' the unit. And then you could drive the two stationary motors at slow speed to further 'lighten' the unit.)

  That way, you don't need another motor to power it on land, and also you could put floats on it, so it would work in the water as well as on land.

• by jlgreco on 5/24/13, 8:15 PM

  If that could scale (and unfortunately my intuition says that it would not), that would be the first reasonable layout for a air/road vehicle that I've seen. Pretty wild.

• by coopdog on 5/25/13, 2:28 AM

  I'm sure it'll come but I'd love to see a petrol powered version of this with a USB plug for an android phone. You can add all the sensors you want (LTE, gyros, gps) via the phone, and the range would be amazing by using mostly the wheels, then the rotors just to get over obstacles.

  Would actually be pretty good for park rangers, border control, protecting large industrial complexes (unpredictable camera points with computer vision to locate human movement)

• by anactofgod on 5/24/13, 8:21 PM

  Fast on the ground, agile in the air.

  It's a radio-controlled helicoupeter!

• by utopkara on 5/25/13, 3:40 AM

  Could somebody explain why he insists on using bullet proof material to make the body? He could have picked simpler and cheaper components/materials. Is this a common practice for higher end quad-copters?

• by moepstar on 5/25/13, 9:22 AM

  Being a mechanical engineer, i really wonder what was the path he took and tools he used (being software and hardware) in designing, verifying and creating this :)

• by dmcg on 5/25/13, 5:33 PM

  If I was procuring military reconnaissance kit I'd be all over this. Efficient and quiet, but able to cross streams and obstacles way bigger than it.

• by incision on 5/24/13, 9:12 PM

  Very cool and ambitious.

  I expect the price point and lack of the streamlined Amazon checkout for US backers is going to hurt this one.

• by Egregore on 5/25/13, 10:49 AM

  The video doesn't show, how it will turn in air? It seems that it only moves to left and right, doesn't turn to left or right.

• by hcarvalhoalves on 5/24/13, 10:01 PM

  If I saw a RC car flying like that I would freak out.

• by bitwize on 5/24/13, 9:28 PM

  "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."

• by at-fates-hands on 5/24/13, 8:07 PM

  I'm getting a 403 error right now. . . ?

• by iamtherockstar on 5/24/13, 7:37 PM

  I can't believe there's not a pledge level like this:

  "If you pledge $5, we'll send you a GI Joe to put inside your B"

  Kickstart all the functioning GI Joe vehicles of my childhood.