Tetra Aviation is preparing its Mk-5 eVTOL Aircraft for flight in 2022. The lightweight electric aircraft is designed for single-person use and is crafted from a combination of aluminum and carbon-fiber-reinforced polymers, with the prototype measuring in at prototype measures at 28 feet wide, 20 feet long, and 1,000 pounds, A total of 32 vertical lift rotors across four wings lift the plane, while horizontal thrust propels it forward.
See more over at... their site
German company lilium has unveiled the design of its 7-seater jet which aims to revolutionize regional travel, saving people hours. The aircraft is capable of vertical take-off, quietly, allowing the company to access plenty landing sites and the opportunity to build higher network density, avoiding expensive ground infrastructure.
The aircraft has cruise speed of 175 mph at 10,000 feet and has a range of 155 miles, including reserves. planned to launch operations in 2024, the aircraft features ducted electric vectored thrust (DEVT). This flight system is integrated into the wing flaps -- electric jet engines provide advantages in payload, aerodynamic efficiency and a lower noise profile, while also providing thrust vector control to maneuver the lilium jet through every phase of flight.
Lilium flies with "electric jets", throwing out a non-combustion compression stream of air. The Lilium's ducted fan is an example of a wider class of ducted propulsor. They all work the same way, to accelerate air in one direction so that the reaction force pushes the fan or propeller in the other. If the blade disc were used to provide compression, the device would not be a propulsor but a compressor and would not exit to the free air stream.
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Short answer: not much.
Around 9pm on Wednesday December 19, 2018, a security guard observed two drones inside the security perimeter at Gatwick Airport, Unauthorized drone activity is considered a danger to aircraft and passengers due to the risk of collision. Within minutes, Gatwick’s only runway had been closed and all flights were suspended -- the full details are documented here.
The Gatwick drone incident was the first time a major airport was shut down by drones. The unknowns -- was this a terrorism incident, or just random overflight by irresponsible parties -- remain. Two years on, the perpetrators remain unidentified, despite a law enforcement operation that lasted 18 months, cost £800,000 and involved five different organizations.
Without evidence – or any leads or convincing motives – Sussex police and Gatwick maintain it was a sophisticated, malicious, and well-planned attack. In other circles. the Gatwick drone has become a punchline, with doubts of the drones' very existence.
Enaire, Spain’s air navigation authority, has announced plans to begin demonstrating flying taxis in Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela in 2022.
“We need to move urban mobility into the third dimension: airspace. And we need to do it as efficiently and sustainably as we can,” the authority’s director general, Ángel Luis Arias, told an online conference this week.
Ehang, a Chinese drone company, announced a new product at CES it's calling the Ehang 184, an all electric quadcopter scaled up from a drone so that it's large enough to carry a passenger. Ehang calls it an autonomous aerial vehicle, I prefer personal pilotless helicopter, but if you need to explain what it is to anyone, just say it's a driverless car for the sky.
Ehang says the 184, which is all electric, can carry a single passenger up to 10 miles or roughly 23 minutes of flight. The person in the cockpit doesn’t do any piloting, they just input their destination and enjoy the ride. The aircraft claims to be able to autonomously take off, fly a route, sense obstacles, and land. And if anything goes wrong, a human pilot is supposed to step in and take over the controls from a remote command station.Read
As we read over at some military news site,
DARPA's AlphaDogfight trials have officially come to a close with Heron Systems' incredible artificial intelligence pilot system defeating not only its industry competitors, but going on to secure 5 straight victories against a highly trained U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot, without the human pilot scoring a single hit.
This should not be confused with the Intelligent Flight Control System (IFCS), a next-generation flight control system designed to provide increased safety for the crew and passengers of aircraft as well as to optimize the aircraft performance under normal conditions. What is most valuable to 99% of the rest of the world -- outside of military applications -- is regarding passenger planes which fly autonomously. Software would have to be capable of handling emergency situations. At present, modern airliners do a good job of flying automatically until something unexpected happens. At that point, a pilot takes control and typically resolves the problem. Very rarely, though, a pilot must act to save the aircraft from catastrophe.
There's more details about autonomous flight over at the I-triple-E, Application of AI Methods to Aircraft Guidance and Control.
It is astounding that no one who wrote the MCAS software for the 737 Max seems even to have raised the possibility of using multiple inputs, including the opposite angle-of-attack sensor, in the computer's determination of an impending stall. As a lifetime member of the software development fraternity, I don't know what toxic combination of inexperience, hubris, or lack of cultural understanding led to this mistake. But I do know that it's indicative of a much deeper problem. The people who wrote the code for the original MCAS system were obviously terribly far out of their league and did not know it.
So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737's dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3... None of the above should have passed muster. None of the above should have passed the "OK" pencil of the most junior engineering staff... That's not a big strike. That's a political, social, economic, and technical sin...
The 737 Max saga teaches us not only about the limits of technology and the risks of complexity, it teaches us about our real priorities. Today, safety doesn't come first -- money comes first, and safety's only utility in that regard is in helping to keep the money coming. The problem is getting worse because our devices are increasingly dominated by something that's all too easy to manipulate: software.... I believe the relative ease -- not to mention the lack of tangible cost -- of software updates has created a cultural laziness within the software engineering community. Moreover, because more and more of the hardware that we create is monitored and controlled by software, that cultural laziness is now creeping into hardware engineering -- like building airliners. Less thought is now given to getting a design correct and simple up front because it's so easy to fix what you didn't get right later.
The screens and their wiring add weight to the plane, and when fuel prices are high, every pound makes a difference. Another financial incentive: Without the screens, carriers can install slimmer seats, which means they can accommodate more passengers and earn more money, Brett Snyder, the author of the airline industry blog “Cranky Flier,” said in an interview.
The latest version of DHL's delivery drone has made more than 100 successful deliveries and can get parcels to remote villages faster than transporting them across difficult terrain in a car. The third generation of the company's Parcelcopter completed a three month test period of autonomously carrying parcels to and from set locations in Bavaria, Germany.
