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Surefly passenger drone performs first manned flight
https://newatlas.com/surefly-manned-flight/54487/ Surefly passenger drone performs first manned flight Video: https://youtu.be/5yFZAPdYCck Web: http://workhorse.com/surefly 70 mph top speed Nick Lavars 12 hours ago 8 PICTURES The flying taxi scene is now a bustling place, but some are moving faster than others. Where some startups have taken years to move past the prototype stage, others are launching right into things. Workhorse first unveiled its Surefly flying car at the Paris Air Show in June last year, and has now sent it into the air with a person inside for the first time. The Surefly passenger drone is designed to use a mix of diesel and electricity to cover... The flying taxi scene is now a bustling place, but some are moving faster than others. Workhorse first unveiled its Surefly flying car at the Paris Air Show in June last year,... Workhorse has a number of electric vehicles under development, including electric pickup trucks and delivery vans that launch drones from the roof to cover the last leg. The Surefly has to be the most ambitious, however, designed to use a mix of diesel and electricity to power eight contra-rotating propellors and carry up to 400 lb (180 kg) over a range of approximately 70 mi ( 112 km). Back in January, it received an Experimental Airworthiness Certificate https://newatlas.com/workhorse-passe...one-ces/52815/ from the Federal Aviation Administration, which enabled it to carry out controlled test flights in the US. The company had expected to carry out its first ever manned flights as part of a demonstration at CES that month, but those plans were foiled by some mild drizzle that posed a threat to the prototype aircraft's electrical systems. There were no such obstacles as the Surefly lifted off outside of Cincinnati recently, with Chief Operating Officer John Graber at the controls. The video, it has to be said, is a little underwhelming, with the aircraft only hovering a foot or so above the ground. But in the field of aviation a first manned flight is certainly a noteworthy milestone. Check it out below. Electric Driven Props: 2 props per arm, contra rotating. Eight motors, each driving a single propeller ----- Piloted Vehicle designed to carry pilot and passenger or pilot and cargo Curb Weight: 1100lbs. Max Takeoff Weight: 1500lbs Gasoline Piston Engine drives dual generators to provide power to prop motors Dual Lithium Battery Packs: 7.5kWh each, used for emergency landing power (5 minutes) in the event the gasoline generator fails Full computer and electrical system redundancy Ballistic Parachute Fuselage and props are carbon fiber for durability and light weight 70 mph top speed One hour of flight time available per tank of gasoline Flight ceiling of 4000 feet. Fixed Prop Pitch and no transitional parts (No wings, tail, tilt rotor or tilt wings) for simplicity and safety -------------------------------------------------------------------- https://newatlas.com/dubai-police-hoverbikes/51767/ Dubai police to fly multirotor hoverbikes: What could possibly go wrong? Loz Blain October 15th, 2017 4 PICTURES Dubai Police are making plans for a drone division that will use manned and unmanned airframes... Dubai Police are making plans for a drone division that will use manned and unmanned airframes for a variety of policing purposes(Credit: Alexander Atamanov/Facebook) VIEW GALLERY - 4 IMAGES The magical kingdom of Dubai continues to cement its dual reputations as both the world's most future-forward city, and the most desperate for attention, with the announcement that it plans to add quadcopter-style hoverbikes to its police fleet. The police hoverbike was announced at GITEX, the biggest technology expo in the gulf region. Under electric power, it can fly a pilot at up to 70 km/h (43 mph) with a programmed maximum height of 5 meters (16 ft). It'll also fly unmanned with a top speed closer to 100 km/h. Range is in the 20-25 minute area, with recharge times around 3 hours – but batteries are swappable to keep these things in the air if necessary. Let's make no bones about this; this is 100 percent a publicity stunt, and probably quite a dangerous one. The hoverbikes in question are a Russian design that we've covered before, the Hoversurf Scorpion 3. Dubai Police are set to test prototype hoverbikes You can read our full opinion on this airframe here https://newatlas.com/hoversurf-scorp...tirotor/48019/ .. Suffice to say, at the time, we recommended the Scorpion mainly for "aspiring amputees" due to the close proximity between spinning blades and fleshy legs, but that's far from the biggest safety issue here. There's a big difference between being risk-taking aviation pioneers like the Hoversurf team, and deploying a barely-stable early prototype into uncontrolled, public, urban airspace. In most countries, it's currently illegal to fly sub-2kg consumer grade camera drones like the DJI Mavic over a crowd, because the fact is they sometimes drop out of the sky, and 2 kilograms with fast spinning blades is already a huge liability if it lands on somebody's head from any kind of height. The idea of flying these hoverbikes, in the embryonic state this tech is in, with their max flight load of 300 kilograms and two-foot spinning propellers, over traffic or anywhere near people for fast response crime fighting … It's so vastly irresponsible that it's hard to believe a police force would have anything to do with it. In an interview at GITEX with Gulf News http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/governm...bike-1.2103894 , a Dubai Police representative pointed out that the initial deal is for prototype hoverbikes for further testing, with the department making plans for a drone division that will use manned and unmanned airframes for a variety of policing purposes. I suspect we'll see some more very public demo flights around Dubai, over roped-off areas, and then these things will go in the same dusty shed as the firefighting jetpacks we've heard so little about since their launch back in January. Then the people that take these kinds of vehicles seriously can get on with the job of developing them into safe, reliable and realistic transport options, while Dubai pounces upon the next piece of ostentatious, out-there tech to flash about way before it's ready. Here's some video of the Hoversurf Scorpion in flight, in its Dubai Police livery. https://youtu.be/aivvwBM5h_Y |
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