Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter(volocopter.com) |
Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter(volocopter.com) |
1. it's really ugly
2. can't glide if the power fails
Power is the real issue.
There is probably a combination of a tendency of people to dream about flying, and how much fun it would be, combined with the ignorance of all possible hurdles, not just physical and engineering ones, but also legal and regulatory.
> The Ehang is electric-powered and can travel for about 31 miles with a person and bag that weigh up to 100kg. It can go at speeds of up to 63 miles an hour and takes two hours to charge fully.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/14/self-flying...
The Volocopter has had manned and unmanned test flights since last year, has 18 rotors in a rotor plane well above your head, can fly with 4 rotors inoperative, has a ballistic rescue chute, and apparently good initial feedback from the regulator.
(Disclaimer: I've invested 1000 EUR in the Volocopter via crowdfunding, so I might be hopelessly biased.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOR_SzLW2Ns
There's some grainy test flight footage at the end, too.
- range [km]
- battery capacity [kWh]
- flight time [h]
- maximum load [kg]
- weight [kg]
- price [€]
- permissions needed to fly it
...
Instead of a very strange and convoluted website with titles like "jump in and take off" (what else am I gonna do with a personal helicopter?) I would love to have some hard facts.
battery: ?
flight time: ~20min
max. load: 2 persons... 150kg?
weight: under 450kg fully loaded
price: ~300k EUR
permission needed: difficult... no airclass yet for those things except. "ultra light"
Those figures are from a presentation of the VC200 and might not be exactly right for the 2X.
Volocopter is a great project and on electrical VTOL is the current "state of the art" but it's very dependent on a massive battery weight to power improvement.
How I know all this, I run a startup targeting the some problem but with a very different approach.
My understanding is that it'll require a sport pilot license, and the regulator might well introduce an entirely new category (as it is not comparable to a heli or even fixed wing in complexity).
"Safety first" ... if safety was the primary concern one wouldn't ever step into a helicopter. Speed and convenience come first.
I would enjoy reading the market studies for these micro helicopters. Weight is a huge issue. Exactly how fat can the passengers be?
2. Electric planes are just barely approaching the flying time that is anything beyond being a joke
3. These guys do not state their flying time
My guess? It is so bad that it is not worth mentioning.
The initial two-seat design uses battery packs, with a
flight-time duration of only about 20 to 30 minutes. It
will be certified for sport flying, Zosel says, and he
plans to sell the copters for about $340,000. He’s also
working to develop a hybrid power system that would extend
flight time to over one hour.
Assuming this thing could fly at 60km/h then a flight time of 30 minutes would be required.
I'm not aware of any electric VTOL vehicle with this capability at the moment. But we live in hope.
Exactly why it has to be developed now and not in five years. Naysayers on HN sometimes. It's a world's first, of course it doesn't beat a Ford Focus.
Controls of this aircraft seem to be different enough from conventional helicopter (that at least license hours were flown in) to be a serious disadvantage for potential buyers. Another consideration could be how this thing reacts to wind gusts and how different that handles compared to conventional heli. These things could be important factors for potential customers.
* rotate to rotate the craft (replacing rudder)
* move forward/backwards/sideways to move (translate) the craft (replacing cyclic)
* operate simple switch on top to ascent/descent (replacing collective and throttle)
(Disclaimer: 1. As far as I know, 2. I have crowdfund-invested 1000 EUR in it, so im biased :-)
If it was about new concept self-driving car with manual controls on joystick rather pedals and wheel, I would have my doubts about its marketability also.
> DOES A VOLOCOPTER MAKE LESS NOISE THAN A HELICOPTER?
> Yes, the Volocopter is much more pleasant in terms of its acoustics due to its design and above all much quieter than conventional helicopters.
Listening to the video [2], this doesn't seem altogether implausible - the sound seems ok, like a fan more than a chopper.
[1] http://www.volocopter.com/index.php/en/kontakt-en/faq-en
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_noise_reduction#Tai...
My guess would be that the noise wouldn't carry as far due to the higher frequency but would be very loud closer in, again due to the higher frequency.
I recommend fixing this.
I do believe we'll see things like this flying around in the near future, but I've always thought they'd be self-driving.
Very cool, though (besides the vaporware).
Pairs of rotors on opposite sides are driven by 9 independent powertrains and batteries, so failure of one battery/powertrain induces not much asymmetry and poses no problem.
At least 4 rotors can fail and the aircraft still remains fully controllable.
Beyond that, there is a ballistic rescue chute (as in the Cirrus SR20/SR22 fixed wing aircraft), which you can't really have, by construction, in a traditional helicopter.
The volocopter appears to be direct drive fixed pitch so it wouldn't be able to autorotate.
It also presumably relies on counter rotating rotors to cancel out the torques, so loss of motors may require other motors to be shut down to prevent undesirable yaw.
I remain somewhat skeptical of these being practical beyond 5-10 minute fun flights around a field, but good luck to them.
Good point, regulation is a huge issue.
It is my understanding, though, that FAA and EASA are moving away from regulation that is very prescriptive in exactly how to achieve something (which would indeed make it hard to introduce an entirely new control concept) towards regulation that prescribes more what needs to be achieved (controllability, safety, etc.), under the heading of "performance-based certification".
Also, it appears regulators in Germany are somewhat positively disposed towards this, and even considering to establish a new category of aircraft with distinct certification requirements and airmen licensing requirements.
I mean, in fixed wings, you have to demonstrate a certain number of take-offs and landing, which makes perfect sense, but it's not really transferable to this aircraft:
ok, you sit in a Volocopter and then press the switch up with your thumb for take-off for a few seconds, then hold it fully down until touchdown (automatically slowed down when ground proximity is detected), then repeat a few times (up, down), and get your license... :-)
Two huge bottlenecks for PEVA (personal electric VTOL aircraft) remain, in my view:
* specific energy of the battery. I hope progress is being made there.
* regulation, as you allude to. A VTOL aircraft in VFR with fairly short total flight time could probably reasonably be allowed to fly with lower reserves. Airmen licensing is another huge area - it would be absurd to require a helicopter CPL or even ATPL for shuttling a pax around in this.
if your flight time is 20 min, you cannot legally take off
if your flight time is 31 minutes, your flight cannot legally be planned to be over a minute long
Anyway, sounds like a cool setup.
You can see this in this video of the first manned flight a year ago, at around 2:26.
You can also nicely see the thumb controlled ascent/descent switch at the beginning. Controls look super intuitive.