Responding to S1, you can make a flying machine that is safe.
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Safe by drone standards and safe by indoors-in-a-room-full-of-people standards are absolutely not the same.
If you go to any tournament where I have any say in the matter (of which there are several), any extent of a “flying” robot will be immediately disqualified even if it somehow passes inspection.
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This may not apply to all tournaments becuase there is no way you can be at every single tournament in Colorado. But it says just as long as your robot is safe does not destroy or damage or risk harm to other players you drone robot is ok to be in the tournament.
No, I obviously won’t and can’t be at every tournament everywhere, but my point was that I would expect RECF to have very strong words about any tournament that allows a “flying” robot, as the concept is inherently unsafe in the context of a typical VRC tournament.
But I also highly doubt any head referee or EP with any degree of common sense will allow a “flying” robot to operate in the first place.
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Thank you but this “thread” is aimed more to make a workable drone that is legal for VEX tournaments. But that thread is very useful on ways to make a VEX drone.
I’m sorry, but what would be the point? It would be fun to see VEX fly in a technical aspect, maybe to show off, when your robot has no material or size limitations. However, in competition that’s a whole barrel of worms, and this is coming from me, who’s posted a lot on the V5 drone thread with math and physics calculations.
There’s obvious safety concerns of someone piloting what’s essentially a drone during competition stress (imagine autonomous and falling robot assemblies). If you went off course in autonomous and a propeller took someone’s eye out, that would be not only be your fault, that would be the event organizer’s and the RECF’s fault for having that robot pass inspection and compete.
Finally, it’s not practical to be playing the game with a drone, especially in this game for that matter. Even if you could stack, the vibrations on your contraption, not to mention that you would need to lift your stack, meaning that with each cube weighing about a quarter of a kilogram you would need to lift kilograms of cubes in addition to your drone weight, and if you could do that, V5 VEX drones would not be as difficult to build by a long shot, and … insert rant
tl;dr just don’t please
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Did someone say V5 drone?
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Indeed I did, but is a far out idea 
Would your tournament allow it if it hovered but was incapable of going above 6 inches?
Negative.
If you can present me with proof of a reasonable safety certification from a reputable third-party agency, then I might allow a robot designed to operate off the ground. Also, you (or a responsible adult on your behalf) will definitely be signing a legally-binding agreement absolving event staff, volunteers, the venue, etc. from any and all liability for any possible harm or damage that may result from the operation of your robot.
Even with those items, I would probably still not allow a “flying” robot to operate, let alone compete, in or at the event venue.
So, basically, if you want to do it for fun within the confines of your own workspace, go for it. But don’t bother trying to compete with a “flying” bot, because you’ll almost certainly just waste your time and event personnel’s time trying.
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Moving to California now…
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Check out these LEGO tests:
You could never tell which propeller works the best.
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I do have to say though any flying vex robot, even if deemed “legal” would most likely be shut down by any head ref, as they have the ability to disqualify any team for safety concerns. This is done at the head referee’s discretion, and there is no solid rule concerning it.
No idea why, but I totally just watched the entire video. 
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There is a solid rule, <S1>, as I’ve posted already.
Just as long as the robot is safe it is ok as I’ve posted already.
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the only case where a drone could be used in comp. would be to put a container around the arena like in battlebots. otherwise saying that it will never happen because vex wont put the time into manufactureing a plastic dome for 1000+ teams around the world.
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It’s the risk that’s the problem. Any head ref would disqualify a flying competitive robot, because even if the robot has been tested, there’s no telling what would happen. What might happen if one of your propellers moving at 20,000 RPM runs into a tower or a robot would probably be a nightmare Freddy Kruger would send me.
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I get that propellers are way to dangerous for a vex competition environment, but what if we just made a robot that flaps really hard?
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I really like this idea. Perhaps “wings” on 4 sides, making it able to move in different directions.
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