Drone or quad copter future?

[R.Perry]

I have asked this on aviation forums, but would like to hear from others.

Questions
Will quad copters replace helicopters? Much cheaper to manufacture and a lot less maintenance?

Will we have hybrid quad copters that can carry people available to the public in the near future?

How will ATC deal with autonomous drone flights, or will technology and AI take over much of ATC work?

In high traffic area's what will be the saturation point? Seems like some major airports are close to it as is.

 

[dirkclod]

Guess we will have to wait and see don’t ya guess ?‍

 

[David Benowitz]

These topics are being discussed quite frequently now that AAM is coming to fruition (or more that the investment hype has reached peak hype).

Quads are not the best form factor for transporting people, but several rotary blades with some transitional aspect is kind of becoming the norm. But the norm here are proposed or early stage designs, so a lot could change.

Nasa has a public site discussing UTM pretty openly, still a work in progress though. More like a flight path permission structure from what I last saw, nothing as complicated as an AI.

 

[R.Perry]

Just seen this

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en.skydrive2020.com

 

[dirkclod]

Ya know I can see this in the future but not in my time.

 

[Philztoy]

Need better batteries, but they look pretty cool. How would the auto rotations go? I guess with 8 motors there is some redundancy. Or will they just use a deployable parachute like some of the composite planes.

FAA approved passenger drone parts are going to be expensive!

 

[clolsonus]

One thing to keep in mind is fewer longer blades are a lot more efficient than many shorter blades, so advantage helicopters over multi-rotors for efficiency and flight duration. Personally, I think the serious eVTOL designs will transition to forward fixed-wing flight once they are airborne. We are on the cusp of something, but I'm not sure yet exactly what it will look like ... probably mostly for high rollers to hop roof tops in the big city.

 

[R.Perry]

As for batteries I would think the perfect solution would be hybrid, gas or jet apu powering the electric motors.
With a fixed pitch prop maintenance and manufacturing costs are reduced significantly, and reliability would be increased dramatically especially with brushless AC motors.
Time will tell, this decade is going to be very interesting.

 

[R.Perry]

One thing to keep in mind is fewer longer blades are a lot more efficient than many shorter blades, so advantage helicopters over multi-rotors for efficiency and flight duration. Personally, I think the serious eVTOL designs will transition to forward fixed-wing flight once they are airborne. We are on the cusp of something, but I'm not sure yet exactly what it will look like ... probably mostly for high rollers to hop roof tops in the big city.

I've seen things heading that direction. What I look at is the maintenance and manufacturing costs of helicopters, verses a multirotor fixed pitch props driven by electric motors. Electric motors respond much faster to power changes and are a lot more reliable. What I don't know is how stable they would be in turbulence verses a helicopter. When you look at the MV-22 Osprey type of platform you are getting into major manufacturing and maintenance costs.
I'm no aeronautical engineer so my thoughts probably are missing many potential problem areas.
Again how would ATC handle a drastic increase in general aviation traffic especially in high traffic areas?

 

[clolsonus]

Again how would ATC handle a drastic increase in general aviation traffic especially in high traffic areas?

I don't know the answers to any of this, but NASA (and probably others) are actively exploring this topic. Lots of challenges ... dealing with vehicles of wildly different capabilities and performance, you probably can't stuff someone in a holding pattern for 20 minutes when they only have 30 minutes total flight time on their batteries, do you setup specific approaches to specific sites? weather considerations are huge, safety of overflying populated things at low altitudes, dealing with computers planning and flying the entire flight (with no human interaction), noise abatement, and I'm sure the list of things to worry about goes on and on far beyond my imagination.

I would hope that there is a maintenance/operational cost advantage to electric vehicles, but somewhere deep inside my head there's a little voice whispering that complicated things are complicated no matter what the solution. You get a simpler power train, but at a huge increase in complexity of avionics and software to manage that simplicity. It's deceptively easy in a quad with a < $100 controller, but things change *a lot* when you put human lives on board. You need a lot more reduncancy and safety margins than in a hobby drone (which drives the cost back up in the other direction). The plausible vtol designs I'm seeing that can transition to/from forward fixed wing flight are not just scaled up quads ... there is an immense amount of engineering that is being poured into these things. The heavyside vehicle (I'm told) manages individual rotor rpm's in a way that it cancels out much of it's own noise.

All the while, our battery technology is just barely on the cusp of making something practical at a human scale. There are some impressively sharp people working on these things, so it's fun to follow along, but there is a *lot* to consider at all the different levels to really make this concept work operationally and economically and safely.

Just my 2 cents from my tiny slice of perspective ...

 

[R.Perry]

Well I'm just an old pud knocker. The changes I have seen in aviation in the past fifty years to me is absolutely amazing to me. The computer technology just amazes me and now we are talking about real time AI. The one scary thing in the aviation would is relying on flight computers too much and creating lazy pilots that are in trouble if HAL screws up. I can't imagine what the airline guys do to keep their situational awareness to where it should be. Oh, they get to keep changing ATC frequencies, and make course changes by switching from GPS to NAV and setting the assigned course. I know I'm over simplifying things but I sure wouldn't want that job.
During my crop dusting days I learned real quick, you lose your focus, and your dead.

 

[clolsonus]

Well, I can't even find my way to work and back home now without using google maps, so I definitely hear your point.

 

[AMann]

I think quadcopters will eventually be more prevalent than helicopters for commercial manned rotary flights. Recovery systems such as parachutes and ejection seats would be easier to engineer for a manned quadcopter. And all you can do is autogyrate a copter in a emergency landing. On the other hand, a quadcopter can’t do that, so it would need some other options for emergencies in manned systems.

 

[R.Perry]

AMann good points. parachutes don't work on helicopters and would be a perfect or mandatory safety gear for a multirotor aircraft. I think for SAR the multirotor would be much more practical than a helicopter. We will just need and wait and see what the future will bring. I know that Molen up at UC Davis was working on affordable vertical flight aircraft for years, now sure what he is up to today.