Why aren’t autogyros more popular as drones? It seems like they would have a lot of advantages for photography and package delivery.
And they could be cheaper to build and easier to operate?
And they could be cheaper to build and easier to operate?
There is one particular brand of autogyro that can take off vertically by pre-spinning the rotor and then applying collective at the same time as disconnecting power from it. They tend to leap off the tarmac. But that is not the norm. Standard autogyros require a takeoff roll just as a fixing aircraft plane does. People often look at the rotor and think that it is like a helicopter but in fact it is more like a fixed wing aircraft in the sense that air must be passing over the wings / rotor in order to produce lift.
That being said, an autonomous autogyro does sound very interesting. One could pre-spin the rotor with a typical brushless motor and then leave it unpowered during flight. It does require collective control to be able to do that but even hobby helicopters have collective and cyclic control, so adding just collective control seems very approachable.
Source: I'm an expert flyer with dozens of seconds flying. I once bought my kid a tiny 2" drone and eventually took over as pilot. Now I didn't take it from him, he just stopped playing with it (What's wrong with kids these days? I would've loved it as a kid) but those little things are so fun to fly.
Quadcopters don't really scale past a fairly small point before the efficiency nosedives though.
Also they have a single large unducted rotor that's easy to destroy or hurt someone with, and you can't have automatic collision avoidance, because you can't easily stop an autogyro in mid-air.