I was thinking of designing a quadcopter drone that could both fly and move on land thanks to its propellers being placed incidental a ring like the ring props used in boats. Would this be possible and/or effective?
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8$\begingroup$ like this? $\endgroup$– LinkinCommented Nov 21 at 18:31
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$\begingroup$ @linkin has shown that it's possible. Effective? That depends on what you mean by 'effective'. Do you want to create a Roomba-like cat transporter that flies? Or drop bombs on soldiers in Ukraine? $\endgroup$– CatchAsCatchCanCommented Nov 21 at 18:51
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$\begingroup$ Beware that there is a chasm between 'designing', which is what is asked in the question and the rest of a product lifecycle; that includes buildability, reliability, maintainability and other factors. Key considerations are the vastly different rotation speeds and aerodynamics versus physical strength requirements for the rotors/wheels. You might not meet the bar for 'effective', depending on whether and how this design would be built and used. $\endgroup$– Toastmaster6Commented Nov 25 at 13:57
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$\begingroup$ Note: the outside wheel should not turn on air, else you lose much power. On car you may see it on wheel size, but they move slower. (Angular momentum). For sure you may find good light materials, but so much more costly (and you lose power). The answer is about SAR so possibly optimized for size (an aircraft: you optimize for weight, volume is not so important). $\endgroup$– Giacomo CatenazziCommented Nov 25 at 15:55
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A very comprehensive study into what you are describing is published in Nature Communications under the exciting title "Multi-Modal Mobility Morphobot (M4) with appendage repurposing for locomotion plasticity enhancement" - the same drone as in the video @Linkin linked to.
It is envisaged that such a device could be used in Search and Rescue, although at only 5kg the rescue part might be a bit optimistic.
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6$\begingroup$ Nature articles are peer-reviewed, the reviews are also interesting. $\endgroup$– minsCommented Nov 21 at 22:01
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$\begingroup$ Looks good in principle, but I see a lot of places where devils can hide in the actual engineering details. Mostly I'm thinking of the conflict between the need for components to be sufficiently light in weight for the thing to fly, but also, sufficiently robust for travel over the ground. It also may be tricky to design a suspension that can keep the wheels in contact with the ground if the whole vehicle is light enough to fly. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 22 at 14:24
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$\begingroup$ @SolomonSlow If they are actually designing it in such a way that it could ‘walk’, the suspension issue could be at least partly solved with some good sensors and real-time active reconfiguration. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 22 at 18:00
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1$\begingroup$ "Rescue" includes keeping trapped individuals alive while heavier equipment clears a path to them. Small robots can help in this role by providing hope (letting the trapped person know that there are people looking for them, and providing a communications channel) and transporting small packages of nutrients/water/medication. $\endgroup$– RLHCommented Nov 24 at 0:53