5 Super Sized Drones You Can Ride – 2016 – Piloted drone
Curious Droid presents 5 Super Sized
drones you can ride in. Over the past few years some people have taken drones from small almost toy devices for carrying cameras and alike to mini aircraft that
are capable of a carrying single person or more and now the supersized drones are
touted and possible future for personal transportation for both civilians and
military personnel. These are still very early days years of testing will lay ahead before
these are allowed to fly in public areas So don't expect to see anything like this
soon but here we look at five of the drones you can ride in.
The Ehung 184 created a
huge buzz when it was debuted at the CES 2016 show they claim it's the world's
first fully autonomous helicopter drone. The Ehung 184 is a 200Kg, 8 rotor aircraft which the company claims is able to lift a single 100
kg person up to 500 meters into the air fly them up to a 100kph
to any point on Google maps, all whilst avoiding object
automatically and safely handling the takeoff and landing without the need any
piloting skills from the person being carried. The ranges as far as it can fly
with 23 minutes of flight time afforded by the batteries which have a recharge
time around 2 hours. Ehang is keen to point out that in the event of a drone
experiencing problems human pilots housed in custom-built
command centers will be able to take over and guide you to safety hopefully there will also be a parachute
should you have a complete power loss at 500 metres up.
Price should be
around about a $180,000 to $260,000 each.
In the Netherlands Torsten Crijns the man behind Quadro UAS has been
developing an autonomous aircraft and has been featured on the news and TV
programs around Europe. Quadro UAS is primarily a one-man operation and Torsten started out as a software
engineer and gained experience whilst working at a company making unmanned
aerial systems, however he soon realized he needed more experiences in other
technical areas like mechanical stress calculations and circuit design. He has
spent a lot of time gaining these new skills and also co-operating with other
people in order to make his prototype aircraft. Torsten's design has 20
electrically powered motors driving one propellar and is stabilized by a MultiWii
autopilot control system. Torsten is also in talks with the Dutch Aviation
Authority in order to get a flight certificate and hopes to in the future you will be able to order personal aircraft by smartphone, it will land wherever you are before taking you on to your destination.
The Aero-X from Los Angeles firm Aerofex Incorporated is a two-man low
altitude flying vehicle that is sort of the drone but it isn't a Drone and it's also a
sort of flying all-terrain vehicle.
One of the major differences between the
Aero X and other electrically powered type drone craft is that it is much simpler and uses no electronic stabilisation control systems it is designed to be written
much like a motorbike but also can be used as an unmanned vehicle to do agricultural duties like crops spraying and
surveying for example. It uses two in-line ducted fans powered by petrol engines
The design of the ducts around the edges of the fans give it the stability and
control.
The idea behind the Aero-X is not a new one though and it's actually
based on a design from over 50 years ago The Piasecki AP-59 K flying Jeep or Airgeep was created by Frank N. Piasecki founder of Piasecki helicopters and aircraft corporation. The Airgeep was the winner of the US Army competition to make a low-flying vehicle
capable of traveling over land or water a bit like a hovercraft but whilst being able to fly over trees and large obstacles it also had a top speed of up to 75 miles. Although Airgeep was field tested the army chose to stick with helicopters and
the idea was dropped until Aerofex took up again. Because the craft is designed to travel and only around about ten feet above ground and is controlled like a
bike the rider does not require any private pilot's license.
Shipping is
scheduled to start in 2017 with a price tag of $85,000 each .The Flike or flying
bike is an electrically powered tricopter designed by the Hungarian
Bay Zoltan limited. The idea of the Flike was originally conceived in the summer
of 2014 when a magazine article appeared that said that drones were OK as small
craft but would not be able to carry the weight of a person. This gave a design
team the idea to make a drone that could carry a person and in the space of a
year I took the idea from the drawing board first manned flight. The six motor
design is in a Y formation with the rotors is on top of each other in a similar
design to the Ehung 184. Bay Zoltan are claiming that the Flike will be
able to travel at an electronically limited height 30 meters and up to
100 km/h carrying capacity of the flight is up to 100 kilograms and the flight
time is up to 60 minutes will be extended range version.
Becuase the Flike
fully stabilized and controlled by computer the rider will require few
piloting skills though you may still require pilots license like you do for a
small plane or microlight. The Flikes control will be by joystick and because
it's fully computer-controlled it will also be capable of autonomous flight. Availability is said
to be sometime in 2016 and the prices yet to be announced but they said it
will be in the sports car bracket hopefully that's a Mazda MX5 price
bracket not that of a Ferrari 458. The german-made Volocopter blurs the line between a drone and a helicopter and is aimed at those who want flying exprience of the helicopter but without the high cost and long training times involved the
layout of the Volocopter is similar to the helicopter with the rotors in a fixed
grid above the main cabin in similar size to the swept area of the
normal helicopter rotor. The difference between a helicopter and a Volocopter is
that the Volocopter has 18 electrically powered rotors and this means that there is much
more built-in redundancy so you could lose a couple of rotors for example
still be able to fly.
Being electric its auto emissions free and it also requires
much less maintenance than a traditional helicopter. Rather than being fully
autonomous like the Ehung, Volocopter wants to give the pilot of fun of flying but
with all the advantages that a fully computerized system would give. This
would allow them to fly with just the joystick just like a computer game but also be able to switch to fully automatic if required the computers take care of the
actual flying, the takeoff and landing and can even compensate for turbulence all
the pilot needs to do just point it where he needs to actually go. The plan is to have a single-seater fun model and then a two and four seater models for commercial and private transport thanks for watching and I hope you
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