• stoy@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    Lol, if one enginge fails, it needs to compensate for not only the lack of lift, but also the loss of tourqe for steering.

    So no, you don’t have six failsafes, you have 6 possible points of failure

    • infeeeee@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      During autorotation you also can’t steer, just want to get down safely. It’s an emergency situation, you don’t want to fly nicely, just land and not die.

      Power compensation is a software/math problem. They can design bigger engines to compensate for the failure of some engines. Again in a situation like that you don’t want a super pleasant flight you just want to survive.

      (Following your logic, a motorcycle is more safe than a car, because it has only 2 wheels)

      The point is we don’t know, and it’s not impossible. I guess Toyota has some engineers who could help in the decision.

      • stoy@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        Following your logic, a motorcycle is more safe than a car, because it has only 2 wheels

        What?

        That isn’t my logic at all.

        I simply stated that six enginges in this configuration does not mean that is is failsafe.

        • infeeeee@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          A car with four wheels can get puncture in four wheels, so you have more points of failure than a motorcycle.

          We can build helicopters with one engine. Adding five more engines doesn’t necessarily 5 points of failures but 5 backup engines. I tried to point out that your example is not exactly right in this case.

          • stoy@lemmy.zip
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            3 months ago

            Sigh, with regards to drones, they use the torque from the motor to steer, they are also very finely balanced, so a motor dying in flight will make it fall from the sky.

            Now, this is clearly different from this device as it has (small) wings and the engines in the picture are all pointing diagonally in the same way, meaning that some lift is generated by the wings.

            It might be enough to land in an emergency if an engine quits.

            But a normal quad or even a hexa drone will just crash or start spinning if one engine quits.

            But I am man enough to be swayed by evidence, so show me a drone with one engine quitting mid flight that doesn’t just crash.