Slow-flyers

ULS Ultra Light Slow flyers Ultra-Légers de Salon

Indoor flying, or slow flying, requires a gym hall. Why cannot we fly at home for our leisure, or for experimenting in the lab room , flying insects with autonomous behaviour based on bioinspired vision or odor sensors? Component miniaturization will allow this sooner or later to . Electronics are already as small as required, but one needs lighter servos, motors, reduction gears, batteries, and new original construction techniques.

JMP team in France has built a below 10 grams electric RC plane. Matt Keenon is an expert in microflight and microdrones. J.C. Zufferey has well documented very slow flyer and flying robots (nice videos). Since 2002, weight has been going down (thanks to Henry Pasquet, Aeronutz and many others).
Petter's Muren helicos are also impressive. Alexander van de Rostyne built the Pixelito and recently designed the PicooZ
Didel proposed the Celine kit in 2003, followed late 2004 by the RTF miniCeline. Small serie have been produced, but ultralight constructions are too expensive to produce.
Mid 2005, new 1 gram Lipos with a good efficiency allowed lighter planes. The 5.6g microCeline was doing vertical flights with fresh lipos and carries a 5g payload to be an autonomous robot avoiding walls. The 3.6g Plantraco Butterfly was commercialized with success. Using tricks to reduce the weight, the record was reached in 2002 with the 1 gram model from David de Witt. Several 1g planes and helico have been built since then.

Now, end of 2006, less than 20 grams planes and helicos are invading shops. The Plantraco Carbon Butterfly uses the same technology as the microCeline, soon to be announed under another name.

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info@didel.com

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