Cycloidal Rotor Drone: The Cyclocopter

As it turns out, a propeller isn’t the only way to generate thrust to fly. The Cyclocopter is a unique drone platform with cycloidal rotor propulsion and thrust vectoring capabilities that allows for some interesting flying qualities.

With rotors that rotate around the horizontal axis rather than the vertical axis, this thing doesn’t look like it should be able to fly. Not to be confused with similarly looking magnus effect vehicles, the cyclorotor generates thrust by pitching the blades once per revolution so that they always have a positive angle of attack with respect to the incoming airflow. The position that this pitching angle occurs can be adjusted with a servo and a clever control rod mechanism so that the thrust direction can be instantly vectored in any direction. With some adjustments in the flight controller, the cyclocopter can translate forward and backward in what I like to call “Slidey Mode,” rather than needing to pitch the whole body to move.

00:00 Intro
00:49 What is a Cyclocopter?
01:25 How does the cyclorotor produce thrust?
02:29 How does it fly?
04:22 Advantage over a propeller
05:08 CYCLOCOPTER FRONTFLIP
06:08 Conclusions

#Cyclocopter #Drone #Propeller

[TomStantonEngineering]

It looks like it flys (or flew) really well! I've never researched how these things work, but your explanation is really easy to understand!

[ChuckHickl]

This is the kind of stuff I feel YouTube was invented to highlight. Great job and fun video to watch!

[farmanshaikh]

Looks like a flying combine harvester!
Great video. Thanks for sharing 👍

[Quasihamster]

Reminds me of the Voith Schneider propulsion system that some ships have. It does work, and it has a few advantages over traditional propellers, but there's a reason why only very few ships were equipped with it. Maintenence cost mainly, an awful lot of moving parts.

[Project-Air]

I love how this cyclocopter seems to be flapping its wings to stay airbourne. What a crazy little machine! Loved this vid, Nicholas. The editing and graphics were great!

[Argosh]

This is the first actually flying Cyclogiro I've seen. I'm impressed! The closest one to free flight was a university project from about a decade ago.

[jasonbirch]

Pretty cool that this concept has been used in boat propulsion for a long time. Voith Schneider is the company. It's used in tugs and some other specialty craft. It can drive any direction basically instantly. Good work!

[presidentspilot]

From an old military helicopter pilot, I sure enjoyed your venture into the realm of a 'new' VTOL design! Fascinating! GREAT WORK, Nick!! However, if that design were attempted, for a full scale creation, I believe that it would be tough to handle an engine failure, for a pilot!! I don't think that an Autorotation would be possible. But for an RC model, .. GREAT DESIGN THAT EXPLORES NEW AREAS OF ADAPTING DIFFERENT LAWS OF FLIGHT!!

[AayushSingh]

Really cool design. Especially how forward and backward motion is achieved just by adjusting the pitch of individual blade per cycle. Really impressive.

[moviesfilmsandmotionpictur]

This is how I always imagined the ornithopters from Dune. Fantastic model!

[ahmad_asep]

Nice. I think the reason why this isn't widely used is because of the complexity and more moving parts making reliability harder to achieve

[TheProluthier]

Really sorry for the crash but thank you very much for sharing this marvellous achieved concept! Thanks for sharing!

[arvindkumarts]

Really a beautiful Machine, looks tiny but a lot of engineering is packed into it (kind of makes it look complex), love it👌🏻!

[muhammadumair]

It's nice to give new exposure and way of thinking of how technology works in different ways

[kevinshen]

When flipping, could you theoretically keep adjusting the airfoils so they always create lift upwards, (making it possible to not only maintain altitude but also have it front flip very slowly)

[droneflybzz]

Good explanation of Cyclocopter principle! Thanks!

[herseem]

Brilliant. You win my 'youtube video of the day' award, a very prestigious award appointed by me. I do actually watch quite a few, so it does mean something!

[illused]

Sweet! I'm sure someone out West would pay for this - they already use drones to check fences and stock and once it moves and has a camera, if it's three times more efficient, clear winner!
I envisaged a "planarcopter" which would work with a linear foil like a glider but the idea never got past a sketch. Well done!

[zh]

Very interesting, if slightly mad! Your talk about how lift varies along the length of a helicopter blade reminds me of another problem helicopters experience: retreating blade stall. As the forward speed of the helicopter increases, so the speed of the retreating blades relative to the air falls until ultimately they aren't going fast enough to generate lift, and the helicopter stalls on one side. This could also happen to a cyclocopter, if you got it to go fast enough, but the "blades" stalling would be the ones underneath the wing assembly, so there would be no change in attitude.

[wbriggs]

I love gadgets and this is unique . Thanks for this well produced film.