The Tesla Drone Concept Boasts 30MP Camera, 4K Video, 60 Minute Flight Time, & Eliminates Need For A Gimbal

September 22, 2015 · Tiffany Mueller 21 Comments

A U.K. based designer, Fraser Leid, has just released some details on his latest concept, the Tesla Drone. Reid made a special effort througout the design process to avoid conventions when it comes to modern UAV/drone design, as you’ll see in the photos. One of the most notable differences is Leid’s approach to the propeller design. Rather than sticking with the typical quadcopter propeller system, Leid thought outside of the box by designing a drone which uses only two propellers.

The two Carbon GlideLite propellers can fly the drone while they are in a vertical or horizontal configuration and, the propellers smartly work together to keep the Tesla drone steady mid-flight, which eliminates the need for a gimbal.

“If the operator requires the drone for slow, wide-angled panoramic videos, the propellers in a vertical configuration will allow the drone to move slowly and steadily. If the operator needs the drone for fast-paced, low-angled action video’s, the propellers in a horizontal configuration will make the drone nimble, quick and easy to handle at faster speeds, while also steadying the camera.”

The Tesla drone was designed with video capture in mind and is capable of shooting 4k video using an onboard 30MP camera with a wide angle lens. Leid designed his concept drone to outfit a 10,000 mAh Li-ion Powecell battery that would provide the drone with enough juice for 60 minutes of flight time. He says the battery can be charged to 100% capacity in about 20 minutes using the MagDock–a display stand that doubles as a wireless charging stand.

Keep in mind, this is still just a concept, though Leid is taking the project seriously and hopes he can take it to the next level as he works out the engineering and discovers viable ways to bring his concept to the public. You can read more about the Tesla Drone on his Behance page, so be sure to head there next!

[ via Behance ]

About Tiffany Mueller

Tiffany Mueller is a photographer based in Hawi, Hawaii. You can follow her Twitter here and her personal life here.

Snuffles

oh ffs this is just a concept. You guys would do anything for a pageview, uh?
- TURNERO
  
  I hate concepts, they’re so pointless.
  - Tiffany Mueller
    
    I’d actually love to here your reasoning as to why concepts are pointless. Do new products just appear out of thin air without ever having been conceptualized? Does technology just advance on it’s own without someone conceptualizing new ways in which it can perform? Concepts are the heart of invention, I genuinely do not understand how is that pointless.
    - justin
      
      Way to go tiffany! This concept looks awesome! I doubt any of these haters ate aerospace engineers…. well I am, and while I see a couple of issues that would need a little fix, there is no part of this design that says it won’t work. This is what a concept is for. It’s engineers like me who have the job of bringing it to functional reality. Rock on girl!
      - https://www.flickr.com/photos/smea_again/ Pete Woods
        
        “This concept looks awesome!” Agreed!
        
        And being a RC enthusiast myself with over 15 years experience building and flying RC Helicopters, I do not see anything that says the concept will not work.
        
        But what I think is irrelevant as the ‘proof is in the pudding’ as they say. For that we shall have to wait at least until the proof of concept is built and that will certainly be interesting.
        
        I do believe in the concept of Tesla but I would ultimately stop short of monetary support because I have the knowledge and wherewithal to build my own custom camera platform, although not necessarily in the form of the Tesla design …
    - Think Floyd
      
      I think some of the backlash here is (specially in the drone segment) is that concepts (and kickstarters) frequently dream up ideas that never make it to marked and not for lack of trying. I can come up with 3 “concepts” for a time machine by this afternoon. Does that make it worth writing about though?
      
      People get tired of hearing about the 60 minute flight time their GOING to get when everyone flying today knows nobody is getting more than 20 mins in reality.
      - Tiffany Mueller
        
        That just makes me sad that we’ve allowed ourselves to become such consumers that we determine if something is a good idea based solely on whether or not we can have it right now in this very instance.
        
        Need I remind everyone that we once thought the world was flat and airplanes were once deemed fantastical, too? People thought the Wright brothers were absolutely nuts.
        
        I think Mr. Leid said it best in a comment he left on the concepts Behance page:
        
        ” If people came here to look for flaws, that’s all they’re going to find. I prefer to view criticism that is constructive and helpful, rather than reading statements that are slanderous and aren’t going to improve the project, but deter an audience. For the most part, I wanted people to view this and think differently – that’s all. Thank you for your insight. Something I need it address is that innovation is extremely difficult, especially when it comes to establishing an idea that’s new and alternative. It might be an impractical start, but its a start. I think if you have to question the bizarreness of a design by it’s level of inaccuracies, costs and breakability, before the concept has even been fully established, the project will never come to fruition.”
        
        I’m an idealist, I know, but I honestly do not understand why, as readers of a website who, at it’s very core is based on building, making, and being INVENTIVE, that we cannot spend more time appreciating the ingenuity of a concept and examine ways to make it work (or at least improve on existing standards), than we spend writing off an entire idea because we think what we have to work with today cannot be improved upon tomorrow.
        
        How can we ever move past 20 minutes of flight time if everyone just looks at an idea and says, “Well, that’s probably impossible. What a waste of time.” Where then does progress come from? Because all I see stemming from an attitude like that is stagnation and a lifetime of 20 minute max flight time.
      - Michael Reynolds
        
        Having spent 15 years in the military I can say that this idea is a very viable concept. Some of our aircraft works off of the same principle. Great idea. Would love to have one.
        
        Tiffany: Thanks for writing the article.
    - TURNERO
      
      I should probably qualify that. I hate concepts posted on sites like this like they’re actually a product. I understand their value but really a design concept doesn’t solve any of the technological problems that a product like this is likely to have.
      
      Also don’t claim it’s a Tesla product or an Apple or Microsoft product when it has nothing to do with them.
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/1009823612375723/ Shachar Weis

So where is it? All I’m seeing are renders.
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/10152882163702882/ Nick Dunlap

Call me when it’s more than just vaporware
http://twitter.com/foto2021 foto2021

This looks spectacularly good. I WANT ONE !!!
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/10153678729461098/ Pipe Zabala

The title is so misleading… Shame on you.
- Tiffany Mueller
  
  Sorry, that wasn’t intentional. I edited the title to make it more clear this is still a concept.
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/1271584606202157/ Kim Brown

I want one, but I don’t want to have to mortgage the house for it…
Ahmet

Looks pretty. Based on the information in this article I can’t imagine the transition from horizontal to vertical. Why would the rotors change position but the body keep it? How do you point the camera up or down? How does it move forward? OK, you tilt it and the rotors will point slightly backwards, but what will tilt it? And in that case the camera points down?
I can’t see the concept. What I see is a sci-fi movie prop.
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/10202832781495381/ Eric Jaakkola

Good luck with that
https://www.facebook.com/app_scoped_user_id/10207828772899858/ John Smith

i’d name mine “the Enterprise”
http://twitter.com/j5palmer Joe Palmer

. if I render some cool images of a completely fictitious/untested product will you feature it? Seems only fair…
Tetraden

I’m sorry to say that, but this thing will never work the way suggested.
If you talk with some competent RC filght model guys, they will instantly tell you, that two rotors generate more vibration than four and fly less stable.
To conquer the Vibration, you need much more vibration isolation than with more rotors.
Also the gimbals are used to cancel out nick and roll. The mechanics in this Concept only allow for proper roll compensation, if you try to conquer nick with the two beams at the back, it will put the balancing point above the rotors, wich makes the aircraft very unstable.

This concept although has no mechanisms to generate any relevant forward/backward thrust, if you don’t build two CP rotors, that are clearly not present and would be pretty complex to build with five blades each.
I could go on for about half a page with details, why this concept has no benefit for a real development. 😉
Thomas Seidler

Where do you get some thing like this?

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