
Volocopter 2x – Safer Alternative to a Personal Helicopter - davidcoronado
http://www.volocopter.com/index.php/en/
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beamatronic
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.

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perilunar
Obvious design flaws:

1\. it's really ugly

2\. can't glide if the power fails

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

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devdoomari
but then, wouldn't fuel efficiency go down?

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

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rdtsc
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](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.

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zuzun
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...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/02/14/self-flying-taxi-
transport-passengers-dubai/)

~~~
FabHK
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.)

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donquichotte
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.

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ben_bai
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.

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elmar
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.

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FabHK
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.

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_ph_
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.

~~~
FabHK
> 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).

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sandworm101
"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?

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simonh
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.

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dmitrygr
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.

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1ba9115454
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.

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

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dmitrygr
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

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friendzis
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.

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

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FabHK
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 :-)

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tempestn
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.

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FabHK
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](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OazFiIhwAEs)

~~~
tempestn
Ah, right, of course. That makes sense.

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robochat42
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?

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IshKebab
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.

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upofadown
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.

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FabHK
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](http://www.volocopter.com/index.php/en/kontakt-en/faq-en)

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

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upofadown
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_noise_reduction#Tail_rotor_noise)

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.

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FabHK
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.

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kodfodrasz
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.

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nkkollaw
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).

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Semiapies
Test flight video from last year:
[https://youtu.be/OazFiIhwAEs](https://youtu.be/OazFiIhwAEs)

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

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FabHK
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.

