Weight vs Battery life..... Thank you for making this possible To pass my middle school, I am required to complete a project of my own choosing. I chose to buy a quadcopter and then carry out an experiment with it. This was the first quadcopter that I have bought and I had no previous experience of quadcopters. This forum has been immensely helpful about everything from, what quadcopter I should buy, how to fly a quadcopter and smaller things such as should I purchase a different battery. Because this forum has been really helpful, I thought I would try and give back to this community by sharing the results of my experiments with it. Without this community, I would definitely have failed my project. What my experiment is Oh yeah, before you look at my data let me quickly explain what the experiment actually was. I attached weights to my quadcopter and measure how weight affects the battery life of a quadcopter. (the quadcopter I used was the Parrot AR Drone 2.0) The reason I did this, was because I wanted to see the effect that cameras have on the battery life of a quadcopter.

The main factor that they affect is battery life, because they are heavy. Here is my data As we can see, battery life is affected by weight, however not by that much. To give context to this experiment, and make it relevant to this community, a gopro (a favored camera by many on this site, from my experience) weighs in at 130 grams. Two things to note, First, more weight could not be added without losing control of the quadcopter This was because all the tests were done at the lowest setting, so that clear trends in the data  could be found, as well as to keep consistency throughout. The drone could probably carry more, however this would significantly reduce the battery life. Secondly, the Parrot Ar Drone 2.0 power edition only weighs 380g, which makes it a mid league quadcopter, not the best suited to carry a camera in the first place. 5 members like this Sign Upor Sign In Or sign in with:Check out the new SourceForge HTML5 internet speed test! No Flash necessary and runs on all devices.

Also, Slashdot's Facebook page has a chat bot now. Message it for stories and more. Hydrogen-Powered Drone Can Fly For 4 Hours at a Time stowie writes: The Hycopter uses its frame to store energy in the form of hydrogen instead of air. With less lift power required, its fuel cell turns the hydrogen in its frame into electricity to power its rotors. parrot ar drone geschwindigkeitThe drone can fly for four hours at a time and 2.5 hours when carrying a 2.2-pound payload. parrot ar drone 2 reichweite“By removing the design silos that typically separate the energy storage component from UAV frame development - we opened up a whole new category in the drone market, in-between battery and combustion engine systems,” says CEO Taras Wankewycz.parrot ar drone john lewis

One of the innovations introduced by Neato Robotics since its inception is systematic cleaning. While competition simply replicated the iRobot Roomba random navigation and bouncing on furnitures and walls, Neato vacuum robots build a map of your home and cover every part of it methodically. The path followed ressembles very much how we humans proceed when vacuuming an area. parrot ar drone mainboardCompared to the random trajectory, this systematic approach is not only more natural, but also faster. parrot ar drone engadgetWith the same battery, the robot can cover a larger area. ar parrot drone reichweiteIt seems that iRobot made this very analysis, since the latest Roomba 980 switches to systematic cleaning. In the following, we’ll review this new version of the Roomba and compare it to the latest vacuum by Neato: the BotVac Connected.

Compared to previous versions, the Roomba is making significant progress (see Video 1) in an attempt to catch up with the BotVac. Still, Neato continues to improve its BotVac (see Video 2) which has unique patented features that makes it hard for the competition to reach the same level. This can be seen on Table 1 which summarizes our review based on multiple criteria. It shows that the Neato BotVac Connected gets a better score than the Roomba 980. In the remainder of this post, we provide a detailed analysis of the multiple criteria we used for our review covering both the hardware and the software of the two robotic vacuums. Video 1: Overview of the Roomba 980 Video 2: Overview of the Neato BotVac Connected First, let’s have a look at the main cleaning system, that is the main brush. The Roomba has actually two brushes rotating in opposite directions. The major benefit from this so-called tangle free brush is less maintenance. There is much less hair and dirt entangled around the brush.

The BotVac brush is a simple one and thus requires being cleaned more often. However, the BotVac’s brush is wider than the Roomba’s one, and hence covers a wider area at each pass. This is the first benefit of the unique D-shape of Neato vacuums. This shape allows for a brush located at the front of the robot, before the wheels (see Figure 1, right), while the brush is located in between the wheels for the Roomba (see Figure 1, left). The length of brush is nearly equal to the width of the robot. So, the Neato is a bit faster at cleaning your house. Besides, the Roomba wheels may get dirty and spread the dirt around. Figure 1: BotVac has a wider brush, while the double brush of the Roomba is tangle free The second benefit of the Neato’s shape is better corner cleaning. Most robotic vacuums copied the Roomba’s round shape, and thus leave corners dirty. In an attempt to fix this limitation, iRobot introduced a side brush on the Roomba from the beginning. Neato also has a side brush since it improves cleaning room edges.

Still, the side brush is not enough for corners. Both robotic vacuums are shipped with boundary markers to restrict cleaned areas. The difference here lies in the need for batteries. The BotVac’s boundary marker is passive requiring no battery to operate. This results into less waste, making the BotVac more eco-friendly than the Roomba. For Pet owners and sensitive people, both vacuums have high performance filters, though only the iRobot one is HEPA certified. Compared to basic filters, high performance filters are able to capture finer particles. As a result the dirt bin is filled faster. Better have a large bin since you have to empty and clean it less often. The BotVac’s one is slightly larger (0.7 L) than the Roomba’s one (0.6 L). Last, from the user interface point of view, the Roomba has only a set of multi-function buttons. The BotVac has a color LCD screen. It’s more convenient for setting up the robot and scheduling its operations. Both the Neato BotVac Connected and the Roomba 980 share many desirable features including scheduling and self charging.

So you can set up your vacuum to operate when it’s most convenient, typically when you’re out. Once the cleaning is over, the robot goes back to its docking station for recharge. So, all you’ll have to take care of is maintenance, i.e. emptying the dirt bin and for the BotVac cleaning the brush once in a while. As mentioned above, the Roomba 980 introduces systematic cleaning pioneered by Neato. Both will methodically clean the floor by following a map of the area to clean. The map is built based on a SLAM algorithm which stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This approach is now mature enough and we are likely to see it more and more in commercial robots. The robotic vacuum builds and update a map while cleaning. Thanks to the SLAM, robots clean an area by following a trajectory close to what a human actually do with a traditional vacuum. Beside looking much more natural than the random motion, initially adopted by earlier Roombas, the major advantage of SLAM is a much faster cleaning and covering a wider area with a single battery charge.

Besides, if battery is low before finishing, the robot memorizes the curent position before going back to its docking station. Once the battery is charged, the bot resumes cleaning at the location where it stopped. To achieve systematic cleaning, Neato and iRobot took different solutions. Neato, from it’s beginning features a 360 degrees laser range sensor in its vacuums, and hence performs Laser-based SLAM. The Roomba relies on a camera oriented 45 degrees towards the ceiling, and thus perfroms Visual SLAM (VSLAM). The laser-based solution of the BotVac is superior to Roomba’s camera. Indeed, a camera cannot operate in the dark. Besides, a single camera cannot accurately allow estimating distances. As a result, the Roomba still bounces on furnitures. Regarding cleaning modes, the two vacuum bots offer the Spot mode that makes the robot clean only a small area. This is typically useful if you spilled something. Both vacuums also detect the kind of floor and automatically adjust the suction power accordingly.

But, the Roomba has a combination of an optical and an acoustic sensors for dirt perception. It can then detect dirtier areas and trigger its persistent cleaning behavior at the right spot. With the BotVac, you can choose between the Eco and Turbo modes for cleaning your house or office. In the Turbo mode, the brush motor runs at full speed for maximum pick up. The Eco mode is more quiet and hence more appropriate if you are at home. You can still do a deep cleaning by instructing your robot to clean the same area twice. The Roomba seems to be constrained regarding motor speeds. However, it allows two successive passes. Last, the two robots are Wifi enabled. They can be controlled via a smartphone app from anywhere through the Internet. This app turns your smartphone into a remote control for your vacuum. So, you don’t need to use the robot buttons if you have your phone at hand. You can select a cleaning mode and the robot, suspend/resume/cancel cleaning, or make the robot go back to its charger.

The app also provides info and notifications about the robot status (e.g. remaining battery, or dirt bin is full), and allows to set and update cleaning schedule. It also allows steering around your robotic vacuum manually like a toy car, which you can do just for fun or to move the vacuum to some particular location without lifting it. The Roomba 980 and the Neato BotVac share many must have features such as systematic cleaning, self charging, and double pass for intensive cleaning. Both will save you time and keep your home or your office clean. However, our analysis shows that the Neato BotVac Connected is technically the better option (See Table 1). It turns out that it is also the cheapest one. Roomba 980 costs nearly $900, while the Neato BotVac Connected costs about $700. If your budget is tight, we recommend the Neato Botvac D80 that costs less than $400 while still providing many of the features of the BotVac Connected. Table 1: Comparison of Roomba 980 and Neato BotVac Connected