http://www.gizmag.com/project-zero-e...ircraft/26561/

Great find!

Can't wait until some of that technology filters down to us. These 6 minute flights I get are too short.

Be a Pace setting and create it.

Like the thinking "out of the box" for recharging the batteries. A good application of reversing the motor's direction to act like a generator. Also interesting is "Will the V tail help in transitional flight?"

To my present understanding, a V-Tail has less drag making it more efficient. How much is debatable.

Originally Posted by rimshotcopter

http://www.gizmag.com/project-zero-e...ircraft/26561/

thanks for posting
it would be nice if vid available
regards
Sam

I did a search on YouTube, there is nothing available as of yet, but I am sure that will change in the coming days.

Very cool!

It was an obvious next step given that all of the enabling technologies are available. I think a battery powered aircraft of this sort is just a novelty though. It will never have enough duration to be practical in any sense. I do, however, think it is a stepping stone to something even better, hybrid power systems. They mention the idea of an onboard diesel generator, which strikes me as unlikely if they mean a piston engine type generator. I think the future is turbine based, more like the APU (Auxilary Power Unit) used to power airliners when they are on the ground. Such a unit could be relatively small and generate lots of electrical power.

The impetus for a hybrid power system in an aircraft is different than for a car. With a car it is about running the engine at a constant efficient throttle setting, and energy recovery on braking. Aircraft engines generally run at a steady and fairly high throttle setting for a long time so they already have that advantage. Energy recovery is called gliding, or more accurately, managing your flight path so you can turn altitude into distance.

No, the point of a hybrid aircraft is to simplify the transmission. If the engine is directly connected to the propeller then it doesn't get much simpler than a direct shaft, but many exotic configurations like tilt rotors have a much more complex problem involving lots of gearboxes and such. Electric power allows for small highly efficient motors to be placed at the point where the power is needed and the energy can be transmitted via flexible wires. I can imagine that these systems will evolve to very high voltages, like 1KV or more, in order to keep the efficiency up and the wire sizes down.

I would not count on a lot of crossover between models and full scale though. At the concept level, yes, and we will certainly be flying scale models, but at the level of the underlying technology we will diverge. They will be running AC motors with no magnets for maximum efficiency, and like I said, they will only use batteries to buffer the power from the APU, and to provide emergency reserve. Their motor controllers will be much more complex providing syncronized sine waves to the motors. All the flight control systems will be fly by wire, and multiple redundant.

And the avionics? Think virtual highways in the sky. It's all gonna be soo cool!

It will never have enough duration to be practical in any sense

This is true now ... but big companies are looking to the future when batteries will be available to do this .

The NASA proof of concept I did for them was kind of the same idea ... and NASA wants to have a bird developed and ready for the batteries once they get here ... kind of try to corner the market ... but looks like every other company is looking the same direction .

I think batteries will eventually get there ... at Bergen R/C we looked at some Hydrogen batteries that would do 6 hours of flight and not weigh any more than the lypos we fly now ... and they are getting them small enough to mount on R/C planes .... Trouble is .... the cost


Not only are the batteries not there .. neither are the electric motors quite there yet .Need more power and better efficiency


Wooow RD you typed a book while I was typing a sentence ... well put .


Think the Jetson cartoon series !!!

Already in the making, a better battery that is: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/...el-cell-power/