What happens when you use ducted fans instead of open blade propellors on a UAV*?

*UAV = Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The machines get very cool. This is a photo of me holding a QuadPuck prototype. I’m at the Pasadena, CA office of Ashima Devices, Inc.,  clowning around with the equipment. Yes, we have the patent for ducted fans in a unibody fuselage.

The photo gives you a context as to fuselage form, size (when compared to an old, fat, white hair’d  man), etc. (Not quite old enough to spend the afternoons sitting on a park bench feeding pigeons, but close)

This is the competition:

One interesting fact when dealing with unibody fuselages with ducted fans is that you can make the fuselage look like just about anything within the general symmetry needed for a flying object of this type. It doesn’t have to look like a little toy helicopter.

There is a new definition for “drone”…

8 COMMENTS

  1. AWESOME.
    And listen, when you reach that pigeon-feeding age in a couple decades you will totally revolutionize the whole thing with one of those gadgets, I'm sure of it.

  2. It doesn't make any difference what I think about it,
    but yours makes so much more sense in stability, functionality, and purpose driven capabilities…
    has it been tested for herding game or livestock?

  3. No, I don't think that will be able to match wits with a Border Collie anytime soon. However if you want to take a video of that event from the air to post on Facebook or to use for some other purpose, it will do things that a Border Collie can't. (fly and take a picture while doing it)

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