Let's Make Robots!

Robotic Airship, some ideas :)

Nicola's picture

So i was looking at some flying robot designs, just out of curiosity. I ruled out helicopters and planes: they require too much precision in crafting and are too complex.. But alternatively an airship could probably be built :)

I've read on wikipedia that a square meter of helium can lift about 1 kg. A square meter means a big balloon, but a Kg is plenty of weight for electonics!

If you use light components, you can probably stay under 0,5 Kg or even less.

For example, some very light battery like this one at 1.1 Ah (only 22 grams!!) or this one at 2Ah, 36 grams.

The airship would probably be too light to effectively fly outdoor, but otherwise it would be nice to have a GPS module and a long-range radio link (this rates at 1,5 Km, not bad), and let it fly :P

There are micro servo that weights 8 grams, the GM10 motors wheight 5 grams.

For the balloon, one of the cheapest way would be to use a condom :P They're strong and light and cheap, the can be inflated to a cilinder that, with some inprecise calculation i did, could host about 0,1 square meter of gas. One could use two or three and have planty of lifting power :)

So the question is: am i completely crazy ?:P

No really, do you think this design could ever work? Of course the best would be to have something that can be controller outdoor, but i think it would be too much..

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Nicola's picture
they would be used to rotate the main motors to steer the airship when changing directions.. i don't know if this is the correct way of doing it, i don't have investigated this deep :)