At 02:16 PM 12/20/2012, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Wow! I am surprised the recoil from the machine gun does not make the helicopter go completely out of control. The guy who made that video is nuts.
Actually, a quick review of the video showed no sign of recoil. Further, the dummies being attacked don't look like they were hit with ordinary machine gun rounds. It looks like ordinary rounds hit the ground, maybe, but when the dummies are hit, they explode. Like they have a charge placed in them, detonated. Spectacular.
It's a hell of a lot safer, and cheaper, to make a video like this, simply faking it, than it would be do do the real thing. That recoil problem could be severe, and, yes, it might lead to some, ah, inaccuracy. I'd not want to be near one of those things, if it were real.
Much more likely: this is entertainment. The quadrorotor may be real. So he had some fun with it.
Actually setting up the quadrorotor with a machine gun (carrying a lot of rounds!) and designing the control system to anticipate recoil when the gun is fired, maintaining attitude and targeting control, that would be difficult and very, very expensive to do.
Easy to fly a remote control quadrorotor around, I think you can buy those, and you might be able to borrow one. After all, this video could sell these devices.
