I would like to narrate a story which happened with me, I come from low financial background. I have always been to education institutions where people are generally from around my background.
During my pre-university college(10th grade + 2 years, In India) there was a guy who probably couldn't afford engineering. His dad used to work at a automobile mechanical shop. The guy bought a absolute dead discarded engine and built a small airplane with it. The airplane didn't do much. It would just moved around, struggle to take off, loose balance and fall over on the sides. But he was forced to learn so many things on the way. As his classmates we took huge pride in sometimes going to his home and helping him out.
Very soon HAL(Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) took note of it, and sponsored his mechanical engineering. He is doing fine now. Generally when someone does something like this, its not for building an actual airplane, but just out of desperation to do something in life. The product is just a way to express what the person wants.
This was around 2002, I hope I could show you the photo graphs. I don't think they were taken at that time. Affording a camera was a pipe dream then. But I remember there was a small article somewhere in the news paper back then, that's how HAL noticed it.
That nails it exactly. It shows ambition, guts and drive. All the elements required to succeed.
It's better to build a crappy hovering device with the tools that you've got and the materials that you've got than to sit and comment about how crappy it is.
I've built a fair bit of stuff in my life and not always in a way that was 'responsible engineering' (see 'plane of rotation' comment below, there is an element of experience in there) and it strikes me that if the Wright brothers had not existed that it is guys like this that we would remember as the Wright brothers instead.
It's better to build a crappy hovering device with the tools that you've got and the materials that you've got than to sit and comment about how crappy it is.
Exactly, very correctly put. To be doing something is a lot better than commenting while sitting on the bylines. No matter how bad it is, building something material into existence is thousand times better than just talk.
When effort and work is multiplied over time, the sheer volume of effort and work brings in success sooner or later.
> Shu managed to hover for 10 seconds at about 1 meter
He would have probably done better if he had read a detailed article on the Wright brothers first. Successful flight is a matter of control, and eight engines do not compound well with a lack of background in electrical engineering.
Assuming he didn't study mechanical engineering either, the fact that he's still alive proves he's good enough at self-teaching to figure that one out well enough. (Hell, he didn't even wear safety glasses.)
Given that, I bet he wouldn't be too hard-pressed to sort out the control part in typical hacker fashion. How many hackers on HN are expert programmers who weren't formally trained?
Agreed. There are ropes tied to the edges. He won't go beyond a meter without some serious flight control software. Even with software, this octopus will be a tough beast to tune.
I would guess he barely has access to Western literature. And even if he did, he doesn't seem to be fluent in English to read technical material. Check out this interview:
Real men apparently put their mid section in the plane of rotation of not one but eight propellers without so much as a piece of sheet metal inbetween. He must trust the manufacturers of those props and his welding pretty good. Awesome. But very very scary.
This is an example of grassroots innovation, jugaad is the Hindi word for it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugaad). Countless millions are spent each year on "how to foster innovation" etc., most of which is BS. As seen here it only takes a hacker that doesn't know that what everyone else believes, i.e. what s/he is building is impossible/very hard.
EDIT: Most comments here are missing the main point, he doesn't care if the center of gravity is high or if the thing is pretty much uncontrollable or that you can't mass produce these or that it has been done before. He just BUILT IT and as far as his goals are concerned he is extremely successful, i.e. the thing gets off the ground. That, to me, is the quintessential hacker spirit.
I remember the Nike ads with the slogan "just do it." This strikes me like that sort of attitude. That being said, I presume he either understands the risks (probably the most fearsome is the shrapnel cloud should one of the engines break free or a propellor lose integrity.) and does it anyway. And I admire folks who are willing to do things even though it may shorten their lives (helicopter skiing always struck me as an example of this).
That being said, I'm suprised he didn't go with a Quadracopter type design. Probably not enough lift but even a hexacopter might be easier. And the software to control them is already available on an Arduinio.
I would be very amazed if he knows the Quadracopter design. Same for Arduino.
One can think: If this guy came up with this without Arduinos, robot kits, HN and other social contacts, what could he have done if he had those? I think that's the wrong approach. I know of a few such mechanical tinkerers who wouldn't even have started building what they've built had they known more about the field.
Arhur Fry, the inventor of Post-Its has said that it was good that he was ignorant of the articles on that subject (creating the glue for such a product) because they conclusively showed that it cannot be done.
Sometimes I think that access to all the literature and success stories prevents more of this kind of tinkerers to appear in this day and age. If you can see it on Youtube you don't have to do it yourself to still your curiosity. It's like the bazillion cooking shows on TV that for the most part fails to actually make more people cook their own food.
Ha ha, really cool. These designs with man-on-top are somewhat unstable though due to the high center of gravity. That's the main concern with Chris Malloy's awesome Hoverbike. However, he does fly the thing, so if you want to go for it, you can do it.
My thoughts exactly. The high center of gravity would have caused the thing to flip over and kill the pilot had it not been tethered (and close) to the ground.
For it to properly fly, he will need thrust control on each engine (either rotation of variable pitch), gyros, accelerometers and some brains to keep the thing stable. I'd also advise lowering the center of gravity (putting the pilot under the engine plane) to make things easier to the stabilization system.
Yeah, I've seen the Hiller platform at the Smithsonian, it's neat.
It's also unstable because of the high center of gravity. However, it has a specially designed duct that the propellers fit within which creates stabilizing aerodynamic effects, counteracting this instability. Also did you notice the Hiller's lip around the top edge? That's a carefully designed airfoil against which air drawn downward by the propeller passes, creating uniform lift underneath the whole lip edge, all 360 degrees around the outside of the platform! Very clever, but also prevents movement that isn't perfectly balanced upward lift, which is why they were hard to navigate.
The Chinese gentleman's aircraft does not feature either of these and will be unstable. But I'm glad you brought this up, because it's possible that the Hoverbike uses similar effects and is thus more stable, I suppose we'll find out more as Hoverbike prototypes make their way to market and are analyzed. I don't really see an airfoil lip of the same nature on the hoverbike though, but perhaps it's there. The general solution going forward with such things is likely not going to be the Hiller design but is to stabilize using automated flight control as has been mentioned elsewhere in this discussion. The high center of gravity is still a stability problem though that has to be dealt with. With the Chinese craft, there's no way it will be flown any distance untethered using its current design.
>Also did you notice the Hiller's lip around the top edge?
the primary purpose of [relatively wide] lips of ducted fans is this:
"Utilizing the Bernoulli principle, 40% of the vehicle's lift was generated by air moving over the ducted fan's leading edge. The remaining 60% of lift was generated by thrust from the counter rotating propellers."
I'm sure he verified a thousand times the blades are secured, but just looking at the picture gives me chills of one of them coming apart, and the scene captured in "Many faces of death".
There is a video linked here in one of the comments and after having watched it I'm left amazed by the fact that those involved still have all their limbs.
I can't imagine very much more questionable than a flying machine built around two-stroke motorcycle engines. He probably realizes this, though, and has no illusions about its suitability to 'real world' use.
I've flown an ultralight once and hung around an airfield for a while it's an amazing world. The aircraft that class as 'ultralights' these days can be pretty amazing:
I would like to narrate a story which happened with me, I come from low financial background. I have always been to education institutions where people are generally from around my background.
During my pre-university college(10th grade + 2 years, In India) there was a guy who probably couldn't afford engineering. His dad used to work at a automobile mechanical shop. The guy bought a absolute dead discarded engine and built a small airplane with it. The airplane didn't do much. It would just moved around, struggle to take off, loose balance and fall over on the sides. But he was forced to learn so many things on the way. As his classmates we took huge pride in sometimes going to his home and helping him out.
Very soon HAL(Hindustan Aeronautics Limited) took note of it, and sponsored his mechanical engineering. He is doing fine now. Generally when someone does something like this, its not for building an actual airplane, but just out of desperation to do something in life. The product is just a way to express what the person wants.
This was around 2002, I hope I could show you the photo graphs. I don't think they were taken at that time. Affording a camera was a pipe dream then. But I remember there was a small article somewhere in the news paper back then, that's how HAL noticed it.