The real name Luke Maximo Bell, but the titular one here more fittingly gladiatorial for someone who beside building one of the three contenders for the recent drone speed records, has also won awards for drone photography, movies and music vids: such people make me sick. He studied mechatronic engineering in his home country of South Africa; a benefit compared to Britain in view of the weather, its wide open spaces and pride in what he is doing (as against an arrest for innovating in public, as would happen here).
The record for how long drones can fly for tho' previously belonged to a commercial quad at 03:12 (hours and mins) and involved a deal of forward motion. Seems drones ~ like helicopters ~ do benefit hugely from even the slowest forward motion in flight and I recall one pilot saying it was worth an extra inch of manifold pressure, a notion doubtless foreign to Gen Zee'ers.
Immediately obvious from the video is how much computing power goes in to every stage of the design and build, and not least for the 3-D printed parts. It is why my 'suck it and see' approach is destined to go the way of the dinosaurs, with no need for a meteor.
Despite the meticulousness of the preparation, Luke declined the witness from the Guinness Book of Records, not wanting to drag one out for the four or five hours it would likely take without any guarantee of success. He need not have worried, with the quad flying for around 03:31 with the great majority of that being achieved in the hover.
With the amount of research going into electrical power-trains ~ the Chinese auto-maker BYD claiming to employ over 100,000 technicians and researchers ~ things can only really get better when it comes to range, speed and endurance of drones whether in the air, on land or at sea.
And it's been a three-part evolution. The first was DJIs mastery of stable flight by use of computer, the second the use of that stability to extend videography into three dimensions and thirdly the increasing coupling to AI that enables platforms to track targets on the ground at speed... whether downhill skiers or soldiers.
Frightening... pass me that blue pill, if you would?
