Draganfly Propellers Remove Easily, Folding Drone Ensues

It should come as no surprise that there will be a slew of propeller-attachment patents, although it’s about time we settled on a standard for the industry to move forward.

Draganfly has stepped up with its one-way-only propellers that cannot be installed wrong (i.e. two clockwise, two counterclockwise), and are easily removed. This means that you can have a folding drone that fits in your back pocket.

Claim 1 (the money claim) talks about a plurality of arms, so it is not restricted to a quad, and other than that it basically nails down the ‘clockwise prop for clockwise rotor, counterclockwise prop for counterclockwise rotor’. That’s pretty broad, and we’ll see how the USPTO Examiner feels about that.

Claim 1: A rotary wing aircraft apparatus comprising: a body; a plurality of arms extending laterally from the body, and a rotor assembly attached to an outside end of each arm; each rotor assembly comprising a rotor blade releasably attached to a driveshaft by a lock mechanism, and a drive rotating the driveshaft; wherein a first driveshaft rotates in a clockwise direction and a second driveshaft rotates in a counterclockwise direction; wherein a clockwise rotor blade is releasably attached to the first driveshaft by engagement in a clockwise lock mechanism and generates a vertical lift force when rotated in the clockwise direction, and a counterclockwise rotor blade is releasably attached to the second driveshaft by engagement in a counterclockwise lock mechanism and generates a vertical lift force when rotated in the counterclockwise direction; and wherein the clockwise rotor blade is engageable only with the clockwise lock mechanism and cannot be engaged in the counterclockwise lock mechanism, and the counterclockwise rotor blade is engageable only with the counterclockwise lock mechanism and cannot be engaged in the clockwise lock mechanism.

Title: “COMPACT UNMANNED ROTARY AIRCRAFT”

US Patent Application Publication No: 20140339355

Filed (CA): May 15, 2013

Published: November 20, 2014