Medusa PVC Prototype Design and Build

The Medusa PVC prototype is just one phase in the journey to fly our TechShop UAV at this years Autodesk University. The PVC air-frame is being built to test the physical scale of the final design. It will also provide our team invaluable feedback to optimize the air frame geometry and let us test the flight controls and power systems. Check out how the PVC Prototype fits into the overall scope of the Medusa Project. Medusa Project...

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The Medusa Team is Growing! Join Us.

The Medusa Project Open Design team is growing at a rapid rate, so I thought it would be a good idea to introduce all our team members and supporters in a new post. I will continue this practice posting new team members as we move along. Acknowledgements: I would like to say a special thanks to the TechShop and Will Brick who’s sponsorship of two 9 month memberships are the core foundation of the Medusa Project’s success.  The Detroit...

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Monto RC Hobby Powers UP The Medusa Project

Thank you to the team at Monto RC Hobby for contributing 4 Avroto 3520 400Kv motors to our Autodesk University Multi-rotor UAV Project.   While researching large scale and heavy lift Multi-Rotor UAV's in the RC Groups I read Stephen Clinch's review of the Arvoto Lift Series motors. I was impressed by designer Andrew Raines 21lb Hexacopter and wrote Jim at Monto to discuss testing out his engine design on our project.  The...

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Medusa Project Official Unveiling at Detroit TechShop

The Medusa Project had its official unveiling today at the Detroit TechShop Coffee and Concepts meet-up. The 15 minute Medusa presentation gave the interested audience of savvy DIY creators and entrepreneurs an overview of what we hoped to achieve with the UAV in the coming months. The follow up discussion included an enthusiastic round of questions ranging from how to get involved in the project to presentation safety and large scale UAV performance...

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Eric Nantel of Lynxmotion and RobotShop Joins Medusa Air-Frame Design Team

I am excited to announce that Eric Nantel from Lynxmotion and RobotShop and designer of DiaLFonZo-Copters has generously offered his insight and time to the Medusa Project air-frame design team. Eric's sleek v-tail design is the inspiration behind our projects internal frame design. You can follow his incredible build story of the Hunter V-Tail 400/500 mm quad copter design on the RC Forums. His work has attracted interest around the globe...

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Medusa Project Selects Autodesk 360 Fusion for Air-frame design.

As many of you know from earlier posts the Medusa Project will use a Autodesk software workflow.  Today we are officially announcing the use of Autodesk Fusion 360 CAD modeler for the UAV air-frame design and manufacturing. Since our project is based on our Creative/CAD/Community philosophy Fusion 360 is a perfect fit. Fusion is centered around community development allowing the design and build team design access to the CAD airframe...

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Medusa Project selects 3DS Max as Creative 3D platform

Our core Medusa team members are VFX and visualization artists. Our everyday job revolves around modeling and rendering photo real images and animations for the Detroit automotive industry. Our 3D tools are 3DS Max and Maya, so it seems the natural fit to use these Autodesk software tools for the creative stage of the project. To begin we will be starting the modeling the exterior V1 prototype of the UAV in 3ds Max using Power NURBS plugin....

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Medusa Project uses Autodesk SketchBook Mobile for early UAV concept work.

In the spirit of keeping the Medusa drone an end to end Autodesk software project I decided to begin with the SketchBook Pro App on my Samsung Note 3 Phone. I excited to learn that Autodesk had released an Android based mobile version. I have used SketchBook on my Ipad in the past, but I wanted something that was immediately accessible and always available. The idea worked perfectly akin to sketching ideas on a napkin.  ...

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Mackevision Sponsors Medusa Project

I am happy to announce that Mackevision is now an official sponsor of the Medusa Project.  The core of the Medusa team consist of Mackevison artist based in the Detroit office. Mackevision supports yearly creative contests and opportunities for the artists to show off their skills.  Heiko Wenzel president of Mackevision Detroit an artist and designer himself has always believed in pushing the creative and technical...

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Medusa build inspiration: Project linkall HK UAV

The Linkall team founded by Jiaqi Hu and Zebo has built an impressive drone that is a inspiration to our team. The Medusa UAV will be similar to the Linkall drone in size and shape, but will differ in design and construction. Our hats are off to the Project Linkall team. See more about their project on the DYI Drone site and the links below. Linkall HK flight video http://youtu.be/IuWmLhJBPzk DYI Drones Linkall Build http://diydrones.com/m/blogpost?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A1142725 Linkall...

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Medusa Visual Inspiration

All great projects come from great inspiration.When we sat down to discuss what type of UAV we wanted to create the Terminators HK Hunter killer and the Matrix Sentinel immediately came to mind.  I looked over hundreds of images trying to find the one that fit the communicate the final look and feel for the Medusa Project. These dark menacing designs with machine minds hovering in the smoke and darkness provoke the perfect combination...

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Medusa Project 26lbs Multirotor Power System

The Medusa's heavy lift UAV power system is being designed with the maximum thrust and lift capacity for a quad copter built with standard multirotor system components.  Follow the tech talk discussion on the RC Forum. Components for 1500+mm (Y4) vtailed heavy lift multirotors Latest Power System Configuration 4: Avroto 3520 LIFT Series KV:400 brushless motors 4: 18/ 6.1 Carbon Fiber Props 4:  Amp ESC's (Simon K flashed) 2:...

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Npower Software Sponsors Medusa Project.

Dave Gill and the Npower Software team have decided to sponsor the Medusa Project by graciously providing our team with a license of Power NURBS. The Npower software suite for Autodesks 3ds Max will provide our creative team with the advance surface and solid modeling tools necessary to prototype the vehicle.    As a long time user of Power NURBS user I can't express how thankful we are for the Npower teams much...

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Detroit TechShop Sponsors Medusa Project

Initial Medusa project sponsorship meeting with Will Brick at the Detroit TechShop. Will was great. He explained that the TechShop was all about the DYI community and is fully committed to helping us achieve our goal of building our UAV. He took the time to give me a full tour of the facility and let me tell you the space and the tools are amazing. Will asked me to make an initial presentation of the Medusa Project to community February the 8th....

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Creativity-CAD-Community>>>> It all starts here.

Our goal for the Medusa Project is to bring together creativity, CAD and community to develop an construct a custom UAV The Core Mackevsion Team of the project is myself Eric Pinkel and Vaughan Gernhardt with various concept input from Joe Palma. However, since the project was conceived as a community endeavor, I am sure the list will grow and grow. The Medusa Project is designed by nature to use a complete Autodesk Software...

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