Advantages of a tricopter:
- three points in space define a plane: The tricopter is very agile
- yaw Servo makes yawing faster
- three motors/esc are cheaper
- very small
- power consumption
Disadvantages of a tricopter:
- no redundancy: If you loose a motor you will crash instantly
- building your servo solution is tricky
- more rotors -> more stability
Conclusion
The comparison of the above facts lead to another interesting solution: The Y6 Copter
- three points in space
- no servo necessary
- small
- quasi reduntant (you won’t crash but you need to compensate the spinngn manually if you loose motors)
Thanks for articulating these points. They confirm some things I’ve been thinking.
I’ve been designing a tricopter (in my mind only, so far) solution based on the Matt’s at simplecopter.com.