Been brought to my attention that there's a lot of competition out there, administered by YouTube in the form of death by a thousand cuts. 'Twas ever thus, however, and when Shackleton set off for the South Pole he was not to know that Amudsen would arrive first. Explorers are rarely the type to give up before they've even started.
Recent weeks have revealed that the outline of the 'wearable' drone I proposed to use was, strictly speaking, the subject of a patent specification filed by a German technical university and the flying machine above is the result of the efforts of another university, based in India.
I am not so much bothered about the extent of the intellectual property so much as my own intellectual prowess in all of this ~ not so much the being smarter than the being original. In fact the career advice for my own life could have been the same as that provided the manager of the Sex Pistols whilst still at school... if you're going to fail, at least do it in style.
Strictly speaking too, nobody has yet to my knowledge either patented or flown a truly wearable drone viz. one that is essentially two-dimensional and that can be supported on the ground unaided and wandered about with.
This week therefore we have to online an experimental program that will encompass the most likely to earn us some form of lasting recognition and a commercial product to boot.
It is likely to either to remain a truly mobile drone not altogether dissimilar to the one above (and all credit to them, for every one of these represents a personal Everest for someone or other)...
... or else a top-mounted multi-copter of the kind I had in mind before people suggested that it was likely to be insufficiently manoeuvrable due to its overly pendulous stability.
Examining the myriad efforts again on YouTube, some people have made a success of conventionally mounted rotors and not least Volocopter: the king of such types. Others, not least the talented German brothers who managed to get a bath-tub airborne, have found the type as insufficiently manoeuvrable as I was advised.
Most confusing is the fact that in all of these efforts, a tweak to the software has sometimes rendered the wildest steed as docile as a seaside donkey. I like the home-build below, which was only ever intended for hovering around the back lawn and does so with some aplomb.
Bravo!
