A really neat concept. It uses a special hinge design, a magnetic encoder and torque modulation to control the lift of the rotor as it spins. Completely negates the need for a conventional helicopter's swash plate.

The single motor does have the pretty major downside that it spins the moment it's in the air. I suspect a 2 motor drone with a tail motor would be a lot more practical. But I really like how mechanically simple the rotor hinge design is - it pushes all the complexity into the control algorithm.

Amazing work this is really innovative and it could be applied to a larger drones provided that the margin of error is reduced.

Underactuated robotics are so cool. In the hobby BattleBots community, there is a design where the whole robot only has a single motor, but it's able to move in any direction and damage the opponent, all just by controlling the single motor's speed.

Most robots have at least three motors, two drive sides and a weapon motor. The trick to getting away with one is integrating an impactor into the chassis of your bot, using the single wheel to spin up to ~3k RPM, then by tracking the rotation angle of the bot as it spins, you speed up a little while the wheel is pointing where you want to go, and slow it down a little when it's pointing the other direction.

Reminded me of the Manhack: https://half-life.fandom.com/wiki/Manhack

It's incredible that changes in velocity still work to adjust the angle of the blades even at the insane speeds they're moving at. I would never have thought that was possible.

I have to wonder why this guy didn't give his drone a leash while testing so it couldn't go flying off. It's the first thing that popped into my head, so I'm sure it's something he thought of as well and didn't use for a good reason. Maybe a string would get caught in the blades?