Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter | Hacker News Reader

Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter

volocopter.com

58 pointsdavidcoronado60 comments

I've been following e-volo for several years. I think they have a winning design here, unless there is an obvious design flaw I am not seeing.

They have such a cool concept. Safer, cleaner and user friendly controls for a Helicopter alternative. I do hope they increase the flying altitude so it can meet the FAA guidelines (500 ft) of flying in congested areas (town/cities).

This article says it has a maximum altitude of 2000m: http://insideevs.com/e-volo-volocopter-vc200-electric-multir...

Obvious design flaws:

1. it's really ugly

2. can't glide if the power fails

Helicopter glide property is important because most are single engine. You could easily put several independent motor + battery partitions in this one.

but then, wouldn't fuel efficiency go down?

This is electric, the batteries are already just big bunches of small cells. Partitioning those won't appreciably affect battery performance.

Indeed. The 18 rotors in two concentric circles (6 in the inner, 2 x 6 in the outer) are each driven by an independent engine, and they're operated by many power trains that supply rotors on opposite sides. So, if a rotor fails (or actually up to 4), no prob, still controllable for expedient landing. If a power train fails, same.

There is a Parachute installed incase if any engines fail.

All helicopters have to be able to land after an engine failure to be certified. Google autorotor

This is not a helicopter. With the volocopter design, up to 4 of the 18 rotors can fail and you can still fly/control/land, and for contingencies there is a ballistic rescue chute.

Adding to simonjgreen's comment, helicopter pilots routinely train for power-free landings, and do them more often than fixed-wing pilots do.

Those "power-free" landings require a collective pitch rotor system.

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.

Feh. I think it looks fine, especially in flight.

Power is the real issue.

I really like these. There is something to these kind of inventions that always puts them "just around the corner" category. This has been going on since https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moller_M400_Skycar in the 90's.

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.

There's a self-flying taxi drone supposed to start operating in Dubai this summer.

> 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...

I'm a bit skeptical of the eHang 184, built by a Chinese company that's built toys and commercial 10-kg-drones - it has 8 props, namely 1 coaxial twin prop (presumably counter-rotating) at every corner. Does not look hugely redundant to me, plus they're conveniently located to break legs while on the ground (or heads during take-off/landing).

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.)

Interesting video of Moller himself talking about it (while sitting in one of these cars):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOR_SzLW2Ns

There's some grainy test flight footage at the end, too.

With all that Moller has accomplished, he's the expert.

What I would love on these kind of announcements is a short overview of the specs (just like they make them for cars and motorcycles!)

- 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.

range: ~30km

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.

The current specifications are 15 min max theoretical flight time with one passenger, that never as been proved on real life scenario. Considering that rotorcopter regulation requires 20 min reserve time unless there is an exception the vehicle can even takeoff battery technology will have to double for a 10 min flight time with 20 min reserve one passenger.

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.

Fully agreed.

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.

While this is not a car replacement for everyone - the Volocopter will require a full pilot license to be flown, it should have a significant impact on small commercial and especially non-commerical flying. Helicopters are very expensive to operate and the Volocopter should bring down operation costs down to the levels of fixed-wing aircrafts, if not even below that, as it lacks any maintenance-intensive combustion engine.

> Volocopter will require a full pilot license to be flown

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).

"Simply foolproof" aka unsinkable.

"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?

If safety was the primary concern I'd lever leave home. I think if rigorous safety goals are set and meeting those goals comes before meeting any other performance or cost criteria, then I think it's reasonable to say that safety came first.

1. Helicopters (multi or single rotor) are significantly less fuel efficient than planes per distance and per time

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.

My guess is that this is intended to a completely different public than planes (short distances). Still looks like totally unrealistic for urban mobility IMO.

Maybe the idea is to make a low-cost alternative to expand the helicopter market.

For urban moblity, let's take a use case of flying someone from central london to heathrow airport i.e. 20miles or 30km.

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.

The 2X predecessor is called VC200 and reaches 70km/h and had a flying time of around 20 minutes.

In EU and USA, flying a passenger aircraft requires reserves of 30 minutes minimum (more in some cases, never less)

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

Well put. I do appreciate your notion of hope. I was going to express this sentiment as "no fucking way!" but in reality I am glad someone is working on (currently) impossible problems.

  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.

https://www.wired.com/2015/06/18-rotor-volocopter-like-flyin...

> Electric planes are just barely approaching the flying time that is anything beyond being a joke

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.

No, that generally means this offering won't go anywhere and anther company entirely will build a practical one down the line.

Height control seems to be directly on the cyclic, without the combined height/throttle handle. I do not see yaw pedals, either.

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.

It seems like a big motivation behind this is to appeal to non aviation folk and make it a mainstream offering.

Indeed, the volocopter breaks with traditional heli modus operandi, but that's a good thing. It is much simpler to operate, with one control stick:

* 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 :-)

Out of curiosity, is there a button that's held while rotating the stick to rotate? The stick looks directional, so it wouldn't make sense to just rotate it and keep it rotated...

Anyway, sounds like a cool setup.

My understanding is that when you rotate the stick, the angle controls the rotational (yaw) speed of the Volcopter (in other words, you hold the stick straight, it'll keep looking in a fixed direction, say north. Now if you twist the stick a few degrees, it'll slowly rotate in that direction (and keep rotating as long as you hold it twisted). If you twist it more, it'll rotate faster. If you let go (untwist), it'll stop rotating and maintain that heading.)

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs

Ah, right, of course. That makes sense.

I can understand such motivation, but aviation is extremely heavily regulated area. I am not sure whether non-standard controls would even be allowed, though. While driver's license is granted for demonstration of rather basic ability to handle a vehicle, even non-commercial pilot's license (which I do not have, so) is granted for demonstrating substantial ability to control an aircraft and number of hours clocked. Enough hours that different controls could seem an obstacle.

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.

> I am not sure whether non-standard controls would even be allowed, though.

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... :-)

It's like a drone with GPS. It stays where it is unless you touch the joystick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs

Experienced pilots tell me that automatic position control even in modern (non-military) helicopters work worse than experienced hand in non ideal conditions. YMMV, though :)

Are multiple rotor blades more or less efficient than a single large rotor? Also, could a normal helicopter be adapted to use these control systems to make them easier to fly?

Don't know for sure, but considering you can run the blades at higher RPM due to the smaller radius vs approaching the speed of sound, it might be better. (also redundancy).

Less efficient, generally speaking you want as few blades as possible. One in the ideal case but that's prohibitively difficult!

Yeah they are less efficient. The reason to use them is that they can be fixed pitch and you get control by controlling their speed, which is very simple to do (it's basically a huge quadcopter). Normal helicopters keep the speed roughly fixed and get control using variable pitch, which is obviously far more complicated mechanically.

I think the big issue with this sort of scheme would be noise. Small, heavily loaded props will be super loud. There are a lot of them in this case. The noise wouldn't linearly increase with the number of propellers but it would increase with the addition of each one.

From the Volocopter FAQ [1] (in somewhat charming Denglish):

> 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

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs

In comparing the Volocopter noise to helicopters it would be something with no main rotor noise and 18 heavily loaded open tail rotors:

* 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.

Interesting, could well be. So not a problem for people on the ground, but you'd want to have a good noise-cancelling headset while on board.

The site is not mobile friendly - images weren't scaled on mobile, could not be seen, only their left side, and site could not be aide scrolled. Imho a marketing site should be completely mobile friendly.

I recommend fixing this.

Considering how people drive cars, this is very scary.

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).

Test flight video from last year: https://youtu.be/OazFiIhwAEs

I would have assumed 12 motors is 11x more chances of failure than a helicopter.

It has 18 rotors (basically 3 on each of the corners of a hexagon, 6 in an inner circle, and 12 in an outer circle), each driven by its own engine.

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.

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