Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
In a CNN episode airing on Dec. 24, Fareed Zakaria interviewed Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Kitty Hawk/Zee Aero. Thrun unveiled the first public flight footage of the original eVTOL concept built and flown by Zee Aero in 2013.
Imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft stealthily cross urban battlefields, while piloted versions easily navigate crowded cities and quietly touchdown in confined areas inaccessible to conventional helicopters or winged VTOL aircraft.
The motors that propel and control electric vertical flight pose design, integration and certification challenges.
The ARL Vehicle Technology Directorate is busy working on numerous vertical flight technology projects, and it’s looking out for new ideas from young scientists, collaborative regional campuses, and partners in academia and industry.
In 1997, Yoeli designed, built and flew AD&D’s Hummingbird ducted fan flying platform kit, which was powered by four Hirth piston engines. Yoeli placed a small advertisement for Hummingbird kit aircraft in the Experimental Aircraft Association’s Sport Aviation magazine for the kit.
Seventy-five years ago, on Feb. 25, 1943, 26-year old Edward Katzenberger stood up in a high school gymnasium in Stratford, Connecticut, and called a meeting to order. At that meeting, the participants resolved to establish the American Helicopter Society.
Katzenberger, having joined Sikorsky Aircraft the year before, had been talking with other employees about establishing “The Sikorsky Helicopter Club.”
Erik Lindbergh, grandson of famed aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, has founded VerdeGo Aero, “an innovative new aerospace company with a mission to provide the upcoming multi-billion-dollar urban transportation market with a safe, clean, and quiet hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can fly piloted or autonomously.”
Uber announced on Nov. 8 that it had signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA for “the development of new Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) concepts and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) that will enable safe and efficient operations of small UAS at low altitudes.” Uber’s participation in NASA’s UTM Project will aid the company in conducting demonstration flights of UberAIR in two US cities by 2020.
In early November, A³ by Airbus — the Silicon Valley outpost of the Airbus Group — announced that it had moved its single-seat Vahana eVTOL demonstrator from “The Nest” in Santa Clara, California (shown above), to Pendleton, Oregon.
The Kitty Hawk engineering team is led by Dr. Todd Reichert (aerodynamics) and Cameron Robertson (structures).
While graduate students at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) in Canada, Reichert and Robertson worked with Dr. James DeLaurier on the engine-powered “Big Flapper” ornithopter — an aircraft that generates thrust by flapping its wings like a bird, rather than using a propeller.
