Light Electric Rotorcraft

In article .com,
wrote:

Hi,

I was looking at pictures of Yamaha's recently announced Deinonychus
motorbike, and was struck by how functional and light it looked, due to
having been designed around electric wheel-motors:

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4686/

Somehow this same barebones functional look reminded me a bit of the
Mosquito helicopter, also featured on the same site:

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4628/

And so it made me wonder whether some of the same elements used to make
the Deinonychus motorbike couldn't be rearranged to make a light
electric-powered mini-helicopter.

Ugh, here's my ascii-art pic ;P

--------=======-------
|
|
|
|
||
||
_||____
| \
__ /
/ \
| |
\__/

So the top part is the rotor and the = signs are the wheel motor that
turns it.
Then you have the shaft with the seat coming off near the bottom of it.
And the circular shape at the bottom is supposed to be a tire for
landing gear, meant to take the main shock of landing, but the pilot's
legs are supposed to provide lateral stability on landing and takeoff.
Some Segway-style control logic on the bottom wheelmotor could be used
to provide stability on the forward-backward axis during
landing/takeoff. This would include allowing the swivel-arm, on which
the bottom tire is mounted, to move and change its angle.

So the tire underneath is supposed to have fan-blades as the spokes,
and is spun by its wheelmotor to provide the counter-rotative thrust
like a tail-rotor. After takeoff, the swivel arm slowly swivels the
tire back and up to position it at the rear. Likewise, during landing
approach it swivels down and forward to serve as the Segway-style
landing gear.

While landing, the wheelmotors will use regenerative braking to stop
the rotors as quickly as possible.

What do you think? Comments, critiques, suggestions?


Of course, they can! All you will need is a really LONG extension cord!