I am glad a lot of you are not scientists or engineers! If so, we probably would not yet have gas stoves, dishwashers, or manned flight.
Luckily there are enough of us who are obviously too dumb to know something is impossible, like you know.
Wilbur and Orville Wright faced a lot of similar comments about it is impossible too in their day.
Three props is not enough to support flight. -- Glad to know that, but in meantime, please watch the video above to see one fly this way...
Why didn't Henry Ford put disc brakes on his Motel T? -- I was not there so cannot answer this, but I can assume from your comment that you mean in the beginning of a new-ish product, no one should innovate new ways...
And have enough power in reserve to carry the weight of the quad -- Please see Three prop reply above to see how wrong you are...
Just because it has been demonstrated to be possible doesn't mean that a simple firmware update to make NAZA do it -- so if it is not easy, don't do it? Actually, if you follow the subroutine algorith Mark Mueller, a lowly student in school, developed, it is indeed an algorithm that can simply to added to any flight program - read his pdf - he has already begun offering it.
It could only hope to spiral down to the ground with 3 motors due to the fact that 1 motor cannot counteract the torque from the other 2 -- please tell that to these guys - they obviously are not controlling their quad with 3 rotors active:
http://robohub.org/quadrocopter-failsaf ... ller-loss/
And do all of this for a price that we can all afford? -- I think you are not an entrepreneur; of course for a price we can afford as it is already done and there is no cost adder for new hardware to the drone to implement it.
There is more to it than just adding some code to the firmware -- I can see how you would have reacted to poor Wilbur and Orville....
The craft in the video is a much lighter and a better balanced quad than the Phantom with gear hanging off of it -- Nonsense comment. The algorithm is just as applicable to a 500# quad as to a 10 oz one. Please see post above for a dji size if you still think all this is impossible.
The quad configuration is under-actuated as it is. That is to say the 4 controllable DOF (Degrees Of Freedom), available as the speeds of the four motors, is fewer than the 6 DOF the quad, or any rigid body in space, can achieve. In Robotics it would be described as non-holonomic. It is not a trivial task to try to control an under-actuated system (quad) as it is let alone with the loss of a control input. The nonlinear dynamics are difficult to model and it is unlikely the Phantom will ever see such an upgrade. -- Just wow. Again, glad there are some of us too dumb to understand your self imposed limits, and dumb enough to believe some things some folks think are impossible are not.
