Single Part Drop Tank

Last crawled date: 7 years, 1 month ago

This drone accessory is used to disperse spherical payloads by tipping the drone in flight and/or via centrifugal force by spinning the drone in flight.
It can be scaled up or down depending on drone size and payload size, and the number of dump ports, mounting support struts, and internal bracing pillars can be tuned for specific needs such as fewer ports for slower, more precise dumping or more ports for rapid dumping, greater dispersal.
Payloads envisioned by this designer so far include:
-provision filled ping pong balls to drop near hungry emergency victims,
-blood or shark repellent filled, quick dissolving paint balls used to protect beach-goers by luring away or repelling sharks, a brightly colored dump accessory would also be more visible to people on the ground.
-mini-data buoys
-seed bombs for re-seeding remote locations
-prizes or other party favors

Features and benefits of this design include:
-universal type mounting system to allow a wide variety of drones, can be customized to further reduce weight
-hollow structure members to reduce weight while maximizing strength
-single part design with minimal failure modes
-open top for quick filling, can be lidded over for use in rain
-"no snag" internal geometry to eliminate sticking points and ensure centrifugal spin-out of payload
-thin walls to minimize mass

The inspiration for this design has been all the recent shark attacks. Before the challenge I was thinking how surfing competitions, popular beaches, etc. should have drone fleets patrolling the shoreline and hovering over sharks and other potential problems. This challenge inspired the rest of the thought process.

Not every situation is always best approached with precision, sometimes a scattergun approach solves the problem best, and that is what this design is all about.