Back to the Future #11

Important at every stage to keep visualising the eventual outline, something that auto-makers have always done, once in timber and clay but increasingly using 3-D models in both hardware and software.

These here are the 18-inch struts, tho' when I look at them (and my original sketch) they look too tall... auto-makers at this stage look for qualities like 'stance' and the extent to which the vehicle pleases the eye.

I'm not best pleased with this, and shall remove the 18-inch jacks and take an inch off either end. If you do this yourselves ~ though you may prefer to sit back as ever and watch me screw things up ~ I recommend you mark which timbers go where in order that the screw-holes line up afterward.

I've also had messages on the forum asking if it matters what tins of tuna are best suited for this exercise, and whilst mine are in brine those in sunflower oil should do equally well.

Smaller struts will also lower efflux from the propellers further into ground-effect, a measure that improves its chances ~ literally ~ of getting off the ground.

Anal Techs

It was driving down the M6 motorway that I first saw one of those things up there on the left, stood outside a boarded-up building, but weeks or months later that I would find out what it was; a security monitor, that subs for a security guard.

Think about that, and what it does for one of the few remaining jobs in a world that is (a) increasingly dystopian and crime-ridden* and (b) falling over itself to sub robots for people.

We've all been aghast this week at the antics performed by humanoids celebrating the Chinese New Year, to the extent we needed a lot of convincing it wasn't simply more AI being served up to our eyeballs.

And it set me thinking as to who'd want to spend upwards of $20,000 on performing bots, when you can hire a clown for kids' parties at discount rates nowadays...most of them likely to be ex-CEOs who can provide tax-advice too?

But you realise these make ideal guards to patrol premises at night; something that appears not to have occurred to Unitree, who manufacture the dog and 'droid above (with apologies to the Dog and 'Droid tavern in the Cotswolds).

Accordingly the apps they list on their website are altogether more innocuous, and include 'data and training' besides football and boxing.

It does raise the question of how they might be recharged, as night-watchmen do with tea and pork pies?

And I'm guessing this might follow existing practise, and feature a chair where they can sit periodically to recover while still remaining vigilant?

So it is that I plan on filing a patent today, outlining one with a butt-plug.

* Ed. Yes, and thank you too for lightening the mood.

Cogito Ergo... nomics

I take a better look at the mannekin and really he ~ though he may be transitioning ~ is more two-thirds scale than half, standing as he does at a metre tall.

Each of these centre-bodies are tho' built at half-scale from two by four feet backer-board: the one on the left designed for droning and requiring only three quarters off ~ it being broadly six-inches square and the other eight.

Experience from having flown scale-build octocopters would suggest that it will be a struggle to keep the weight down, and so what I intend is to construct two maritime drones using identical centre-sections like that on the left... and supported after all on 18" struts at each corner.

One of these is to be fitted with two cruise motors and dummy lift-motors to demo operations in displacement and on the plane as a regular cat; the other will feature four lift-motors and dummy cruise motors in order to demo unassisted launch from land onto water, and operations just above it at speed inside ground-effect.

The benefit of the latter is that it can be demo'ed equally over turf as over water: a whole lot easier in terms of recovery should it come to an unscheduled stop for any reason.

I've two sets of skis courtesy of Wickes home depot store ~ who have yet to realise that they sell skis  ~ and the plan is to finish the crewed mock-up prior switching a pair of skis over to the additional drone-sized version.

All in all I'm happy with how it is coming together. I like hovercraft and helicopters beside boats and the idea of combining all three in a way that is straightforward and largely free of regulation is as attractive to me as it must be to so many others.

So let's make, make a better drone, for you and for me and the entire human race.

Ed. I think I'm going to be sick.

Back to the Future #10

We've probably touched on this elsewhere but the box is unlikely to include perfect joins all round and so what I do here is switch to silicone to seal it up altogether. At the same time you can pop a bead of sealant down the outsides of the box where it about the cap-ends, principally for extra support (because they are anyway sealed from within).

Silicone preferred at this stage because (a) its cheaper (b) its lighter (c) its quicker and easier to apply. Nonetheless it produces powerful fumes in enclosed spaces and should at any stage you feel that you are being watched over by a giant rabbit then it is probably time to take a break.

Lift Plus

And here's what I mean... as China races ahead in both robotics and electric VTOL.

But this beast from Shanghai is what they mean by a 'lift plus cruise' configuration, and what we are considering among these pages for our flat-cat.

Its benefit is simplicity, needing no actuators to vector motors from the vertical to the horizontal that might potentially prove to be something of an Achilles Heel.

On the other hand what they've done with it looks altogether more complicated than what might be achieved with a conventional helicopter carrying a similar number of people, like Robinson's R88 below.

I was long ago offered an interview by Bristow Helicopters in the UK that I declined, and had I not done so it would have been a Robinson that I'd be using for my initial training.

It's one reason I suppose that if I am to build a boat, it has also to hover.

For regular readers too, note the cable-cutter.

Max Flex

The question of how tall the struts should be to match the re-jigged accommodation raises its ugly head, and so I return to the lab to find out (once I've donned hazmat gear in order not to introduce even a speck of dust into the environment).

Am switching from uPVC skirting boards to stripwood for this build, now that Wickes (as I told them) has become the go-to destination for maritime drone-building.

What I've done is park the trailer on the middle of this eight-foot lath, because that is about how much the rear lift-props and that accommodation are set to occupy.

With laser-calibrated hydraulic jacks (out of view here) I discovered that these bad boys are unwilling to flex beyond eighteen inches... worth knowing as I had settled on twenty-four inch uprights.

What I shall do ~ as we always want to work in divisors of stock timber at 96 inches or 2440mm ~ is to settle for 16 inches instead. Or in fact 400mm, as the laminated foam that we set out with was rounded down to 1200mm by 600mm.

We could bend the timber further ~ and permanently ~ like Scandies do with chairs, but that involves a steam-room I don't have. Besides, this is set to be delivered in flat-packed form, which doesn't really admit anything that is curved from the get-go.

I used to remove extraneous items from within the frame of each photo in order to clarify, but now I can't be bothered. If that upsets you, you can leave now and take your things with you.

Back to the Future #9

This being the value of a mock-up or visualisation (in the highest possible definition and three dimensions): I dismantle the bods of a couple of mono-ski builds in order to re-build a centre-body to more practical proportions. The template is now at the level of the rhesus monkey, putting it well within range of those emerging from UK schools everywhere:

Ed. or just a little beyond his own school-leaving grades of D, D and E. He did tho' make president of the Geographical Society, enabling him to stay in the warmth at lunch-time playing documentaries backwards through the projector.