The Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo has a goal of using drones to transport people. As a minor detour on the road to personal air transport it was announced that their Megakopter drone achieved a world record by lifting 61 kilograms in Oslo, the heaviest payload on record.
Megakopter is part of the University: Experiences program, intended to grow excitement in Norway and internationally about STEM activities. Previous Experiences programs have involved roller coaster analysis and testing using human test subjects and cameras. The official Guinness run was held in October as part of the University’s Cutting Edge Festival.
The copter has 48 different motors each with 13 inch propellers and each motor has a theoretical lift capacity of 3 kilograms. Eight clusters of six copters each are controlled as separate units to provide thrust and control. A separate controller onboard the craft kicks in if signal from the pilot is lost to help Megakopter float to the ground. Twenty four different batteries each provide 140 amperes that the team says is equivalent to 70 kiloWatts of power. The flight time is only two to four minutes currently but future flights are expected to hold more batteries and fly for longer periods of time.
Aluminum tubing, plywood and 3D printed wiring routers are the main components of the copter’s sparse frame, with large exercise balls used as landing feet. Gyroscopes and accelerometers are used as motor control and horizontal stabilizers. The theoretical upper limit for operating drones in Europe is 150 kilograms for an unmanned aircraft according to the September 2015 Drone information released by the European Aviation Safety Agency. Megakopter is incredible and a great intersection between STEM outreach, the moonshot goal of personal transportation development, and a thing we do because we’re engineers and we can.