Yi Erida Tricopter Drone

Discussion in 'Drone Minds Blogs' started by Jonathan, Sep 16, 2016.

  1. Jonathan

    Jonathan Drone Expert
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    #1 Jonathan, Sep 16, 2016
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2016
    Recently, at InterDrone 2016 last week, @YITechnology unveiled their new tricopter drone which is made from carbon fiber, is very light and very fast with a reported top speed of 75mph. The new drone also has its own Gorpro-esque 4K camera.

    yi-erider-drone.png

    For anyone like me who's been around civilian drones from the start, having just three motors is not a new idea and many of us were building and experimenting with tricopters 5 or 6 years ago. Probably the king of the tricopter is David Windestål, you can see all his designs and builds at http://rcexplorer.se/category/projects/.

    The flight characteristics are a little different to quadcopter or hexacopter style drones, which increase power to one side or another to move forward and backward, or slow down or speed up every other motor to create yaw. A tricopter actually tilts the single rear motor left and right to steer, and flies a little like a cross between a fixed wing plane and a quadcopter. Having less motors makes it more efficient, but a little less stable - more at home in forward flight than hovering. Having said that, I imagine the newer YI Technology tricopter will probably incorporate far more sophisticated algorithms than we were using half a decade ago. Flight times should also be pretty good when compared to a quadcopter of similar size.

    yi-erider-drone-folded.png

    This is YI Technology's first foray into the drone world, but they have a history in camera technology, especially sports cameras and dash cams. Full specifications and price are not available yet, but you can enter your email, like I did, to be updated with further information. http://www.yitechnology.com/drones/index.html

    I have no idea whether or not this will be a good drone or a flop, but it's nice to see something different ahead of the long long long awaited Karma Drone from Gorpo.
     

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