Fri, Apr 08, 2016
First Human-Rated Multicopter May Mark A New Era Of Urban Mobility
How often have you looked at your (or someone else's) quadcopter and said "I'd love to be able to fly one of those ... for real."?
Well, that reality may be closer than ever with the initial manned flights with the world's first certified Multicopter, e-volo's Volocopter VC200 in Germany.
e-Volo says the flight marks the beginning of a new era in urban mobility.
The Volocopter is a personal aerial vehicle that is so easy and safe to fly, literally anyone can command it. Due to its electric propulsion, it has no tailpipe emissions and is impressively quiet. For the first time humans' dream of personal flight as a daily routine becomes attainable. As such it not only offers more widespread use in conventional aircraft domains, but brings us another step closer to air taxi services and entire transportation systems in the third dimension.
The Volocopter VC200 received the 'permit-to-fly' as an ultralight aircraft from German aviation authorities in February 2016. In the context of the commenced test program, e-volo has started to conduct manned flights. The historic world premiere of a flight with a certified multicopter was made by e-volo managing director Alexander Zosel on March 30th, 2016 on an airfield in Southern Germany.
Thanks to its innovative flight control, the vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) is extremely easy to fly. The Volocopter is piloted one-handedly with a single joystick and significantly reduces the number one reason for fatal accidents in conventional helicopters: human error. To demonstrate this feature, Zosel releases his hand from the joystick to applaud his team during the premiere flight, while the Volocopter automatically holds its position. A comprehensive redundancy concept compensates any failure by critical components including the loss of several motors. This was demonstrated exhaustively during the certification process.
Sales for the Volocopter are expected to begin in 2018.
(Images provided with Volocopter news release)
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