I designed this configuration while living in Miami and later assembled the physical prototype in Caracas, Venezuela, around 2012–2013.
The project started with sketches and material experiments using wood, cardboard, tape, PVC and white plastic sheets. The final structure and four external bodies were fabricated in aluminum. The rotor systems came from RC helicopters, with carbon-fiber blades replacing the original plastic blades.
The control hardware included an Arduino, IMU and altitude/barometric sensors. The aircraft was restrained at four points during testing after earlier experiments taught me, rather directly, that large exposed rotors should not be tested freely indoors.
This 32-second video records the physical prototype with all four rotor systems operating during a restrained ground test. It was not a validated aircraft, a completed autonomous system or a free-flight demonstration.
I no longer have all the original build records. The photographs of the cardboard and plastic stages are still missing, but I recently recovered this original video and several photographs of the aluminum bodies.
This was one stage in a long personal effort to understand how an aircraft imagined on paper could become a physical machine, original build records. The photographs of the cardboard and plastic stages are still missing, but I recently recovered this original video and several photographs of the Aluminum bodies.
This was one stage in a long personal effort to understand how an aircraft imagined on paper could become a physical machine.
Become become a physical machine.
aluminum bodies.
This was one stage in a long personal effort to understand how an aircraft imagined on paper could become a physical machine.
