Also: Altitude Angel, GA-ASI Demo Flights, Terra Drone, Global Agriculture Drones Market
NASA has developed a flexible way to test new designs for aircraft that use multiple rotors to fly. The Multirotor Test Bed, or MTB, will let researchers study a wide variety of rotor configurations for different vehicles, including tiltrotor aircraft, mid-sized drones and those future air taxis. The agency released a video showing the MTB set up in a four-rotor configuration during a recent demonstration inside the U.S. Army’s 7- by 10-foot wind tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. While spinning, the rotors move between a forward, airplane-like orientation and an upward, helicopter-like one that can simulate vertical takeoff and hovering.