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
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