[tshaddox]

I’m not sure what reasons there would be for quadcopters not scaling up well. Bigger rotors should be more efficient like with any other aircraft. Perhaps there are scaling issues with quickly changing the speed of larger rotors to maintain flight control? That could be resolved by using variable-pitch rotors, although at that point you’ve lost the key advantage of multirotors (which is their mechanical simplicity) and you’re probably better off with just one even bigger rotor with cyclic pitch control (i.e. a helicopter).

[leetcrew]

helicopters also have one major advantage for manned applications: autorotation. there's at least a chance to survive loss of power in a helicopter. a quad with no power just falls.

[cronix]

I'm kind of surprised they use only 4. There are drones with 6 and 8 rotors, which can still fly if 1 fails, which they use in the film industry to fly heavier, more expensive cameras. There are also ways to get quads to fly on less than 4 rotors if one becomes damaged, although as a human I'm not sure I'd want to be in one doing it. Here's a Ted Talk with a live demo from 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2itwFJCgFQ

[sandos]

I think its really 8 though, just pancaked on top of eachother?

[mkl]

The site says this can fly with one motor out.

[tshaddox]

Autorotation is a great thing to have when your motor fails, but presumably multirotors would at least make up some reliability by having several motors and presumably being able to safety land when one motor fails.

[LVDOVICVS]

This machine includes a fast-deploying ballistic chute.