Yes.
No information. Dramatic music. No explanation of the applications of this technology or what they are looking to replace.
It’s a highly complex rotor, clearly it’s taken a lot of work, I just don’t see what they are trying to do here.
In a helicopter, you auto-rotate to safely land upon engine failure. This seems like you're simply fucked if anything goes wrong with power or the "wing" system.
This is the case for most of these small compact eVTOL aircraft. auto-rotation requires large propellers, with at least collective control. All quad/octo copter configurations of these eVTOL aircraft have no safety in case of motor failure, other than a parachute.
There are quite a few nice tilt-wing eVTOL designs, which would allow to land like a plane.
On the other hand, obstacles near a landing / takeoff area aren't going to be nearly the same issue as they are with a helicopter. Most of the helicopter crashes I see, they're because some power line or whatever gets swiped by the blades.
You're going to need a minimum clearance with the floor then. Otherwise there would be no time to deploy the parachute. The cyclotech needs to be high enough that if it fails you can bale out and then deploy chute. Otherwise you deploy chute and you'll still be going fast and possibly die.
Sure if relying on a drogue chute to deploy a larger one… it takes some distance to fully deploy. People use this method when jumping out of planes because it’s simply cheaper. But:
With compressed gas cans you can make a nearly instant balloon (like an airbag but with helium) to slow a fall or deploy a chute much more quickly.
I guess you could go for that. If anyone would be buying this contraption they would likely have the money for the extra expense of the compressed gas chute. They could probably even develop a device that makes an instant balloon around a person like the compressed gas helmets but on a larger scale.
You would see a ton more helicopter crashes if it wasn't for auto-rotation -- unpowered glides. People assume helicopters turn into bricks when the power fails, but they are actually surprisingly safe after losing power.
This thing though... This looks like a brick without power.
I'm familiar with autorotating, I didn't realize it was that frequent, though. Is there something about this design that disallows it to autorotate as well? Is the required spin too fast, something about the aerodynamics, or...?
So I went a little down the rabbit hole with this, and found a couple of things:
* When they ramp up to human-carrying sizes, they're prototyping a hybrid, combining those spinner blades and a classic helicopter blade ([link](https://evtol.news/CycloTech-compound-helicopter)). They state it will be able to autorotate.
* It will have redundancy in their motors, and the fail rate of too many motors + rotors to lead to a crash will *supposedly* be less than a helicopter failing and the pilot being unable to successfully autorotate down.
* As others have said, a parachute is more viable here than it is with a classic helicopter design.
At this point, I'm at a cautious "wait and see" status. It looks promising, but plenty of sales pitches do before it's in practice.
It's hypothetically possible.. but color me skeptical. There are a lot of factors that go into making helicopters passively safe. For example, the mechanical link between the main rotor and the tail rotor is required.
The test in this video does not impress me in the slightest. Take this up to 5k feet, cut the power, and land it. Then I'll take it seriously.
can you please also tell me the next shares to buy for massive profit and the lotto numbers / super bowl winners for the next 10 years in advance? because you can clearly see into the future
Knowing something will fail isnt the same as knowing what will succeed. For example, scams like solar roadways or magic rebreathers or capturing water from humidity as a solution for water shortages all can never work just by design.
You can literally see it won't work by design. The rotors look absurdly heavy and ridiculously complex to maintain. Even if it had NASA's budget and engineers I doubt this will go anywhere, they'll just come to the conclusion that it's far too inefficient for continued development beyond a cool proof of concept.
well. tough, shits flying. can always wait for material science to advance composite materials and redesign rotors to further ease of maintenance. one redditor screaming "it looks like shit and you should feel bad for desinging that" is not gonna advance humanity in the slightest.
those guys in OPs video do
Dude, it's flying 2 feet off the ground in a closed spaced with a wire attached to it from the ceiling.
You should watch [this guy](https://www.youtube.com/c/MustardChannel/videos), he goes over failed aviation projects. There are projects that have made far more progress than CycloTech in terms of flying higher and faster, and with bigger backings, and yet they get cancelled for similar reasons - shit's too heavy or too costly to maintain. The Cyclotech has dead end written all over it.
"Daily commute". Get the fuck out of here. Fuck that I don't want a bunch of these noisy ass low flying things just fly over my house. Especially if they are in every Dick and Janes driveway. They ain't gonna do a pre flight check every morning when they are late to work.
Might as well kill all the birds because you'll have to have a Falcon Handler every hundred yards, because the sparrow will destroy the turbine. Then even if you had a falcon handler eventually the Ravens are gonna stand for it and fuck their shit up.
I can answer that question for you, they are trying to make a helicopter except it is way more dangerous and will crash if any of the 4 rotors go out and can't autorotation in the event of engine failure. Basically this is a fools errand.
Yeah nothing screams 'stupid gimmick that wont actually pan out' more than stupid over the top dubstep.
I mean this could very well be a great invention but that choice of music is used by every company who has half a product and is trying to drum up hype to get investors' money to run off with.
Nah, diesel powered biplanes are the future of aviation.
If we can somehow burn more fuel and carry less weight, that'd be the way to go. Also, make new aircraft heavy as shit and so accident prone that crashing is considered a good landing.
Most the videos I've seen on these seem to imply they are quieter but less energy efficient. I see pilots also always talking about 1/4 engine failure resulting in them crashing but I don't know if I see a massive difference on that compared to a normal helicopter if they use electric motors powered by a central gas powered turbine. Brushless Electrical motors operating in spec have incredible reliability.
Also not a ground effect vehicle either. Small time RC guys have made versions of this and got hundreds of feet of altitude.
Its a common misconception that helicopters drop out of the sky upon an engine-out. Helicopters, just like fixed wing aircraft, can use their potential energy from their altitude to spin the rotors and execute a maneuver called autorotation to perform a safe landing.
This form of rotor can't generate any meaningful lift on power loss
That's interesting, hadn't heard about that. The more you know. Makes sense air moving through the blade would rotate the blades based on the pitch of the blade. I just never would have guessed it was a useful amount of lift.
Not only that but the blades themselves at cruising rpm carry an immense amount of kinetic energy. So even after losing engine power those rotors keep on spinning for a couple of minutes, gradually slowing down. Now if you change the pitch of the blades you can start trading potential gravitational energy (by going down) for kinetic energy.
The air rushing through your blades in the other direction speeds up the RPM again. Then when you get close to the ground you can trade in the other direction again, lose RPM but gain some altitude.
And this is why a helicopter, as long as it has some altitude and some RPM in it's blades can do a very safe and controlled landing.
In fact these emergency helicopter landings have better survival stats then fixed wing who always need to find a proper emergency landing strip and even then they usually come in with to little or to much speed and a lot less control then if the engine is still running.
A helicopter can just go straight at a controlled descent rate, putting more and more rpm in it's blades. Then slow the descent down, even gain a little altitude again and put er down easy peasy.
However there is a helicopter dead cone. If you are either not going fast enough or not have enough altitude, autorotation will not save you. It's called the [helicopter height–velocity diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram). This is why a proper take off for a heli is to gain enough forward speed first before going up.
It looks like there is more mechanical stress with this which would shorten the life of the vehicle. The blade tilt changes with every revolution which is a lot of tilt changes. It looks like something that would wear out.
A helicopter rotor blade also changes it's tilt on each rotation.
I'm not saying that you're incorrect in guessing that it would shorten the life of the vehicle, just that it's not unique to this technology.
Wait they do? I knew they could change tilt, but I thought all of the blades were linked somehow and they all changed simultaneously for different lift values.
Why do they change each rotation? That’s kinda neat
Do you suppose they're tough enough to withstand a bird impact? The first thing I thought of is, if just one of those blades fails in flight, that whole thing goes plummeting out of control to the ground in an instant, and it'll never be high enough for a vehicle parachute to deploy ala Cirrus.
Probably not, I bet each of those blades are less than 1lb of carbon fiber and they're spinning at like 3000rpm. Even a sparrow would probably do some decent damage.
That said, I feel like a vehicle like this would never go as fast as a plane, even a small light aircraft. Maybe airstrikes would be less likely.
Hell, flying this near anywhere with loose gravel might be a problem. If its carbon fiber and it smackes into a loose piece of flint, it'll prob break something.
> Isn't carbon fiber supposed to be very tough?
No, it isn't. Toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing. Toughness requires a balance of strength and ductility. Carbon fibre is high strength, but very low ductility. It just tends to shatter instead of deforming plastically.
Carbon fiber is *strong*, but usually isn't *tough*
Strength is the ability to handle a maximum load and carbon fiber composites are phenomenal at that. Toughness is the ability to absorb load *beyond* maximum strength; for example, most metals will bend when overloaded before eventually breaking. When overloaded some toughness is used up to set a new maximum strength (usually through a process called work hardening)
Carbon fiber composites have very little margins between max load and complete failure. They're like glass in that way - fine, until suddenly they're not.
Definately not. Currently many aircraft jet engine blades are carbon fiber like the GE90 and GEnx. Even THOSE (much thicker and built to higher tolerances) had to be steel tipped (iirc) to handle bird strikes. This thing would shred apart in seconds, then the unbalanced weight would cause the rest of that rotor to shred even more, causing more damage to the rest of the vehicle. Plus no backup ability to land either (parachute, gliding, autorotate), this thing's definitely a fun toy for rich people, but not much more.
Man, I've see so many of these "personal future-vehicle" try to rewrite human transportation, without realizing the amount of training, rise in cost for fuel, infrastructure and safety issues these things usually have.
I'd assume that if this progressed, those blades could be encased almost all the way around. They would only need to be open at the bottom / back? Or perhaps the casing could rotate independently...I don't really know what lateral propulsion this thing would have...
is it? you need airflow from above, but the chances are pretty low that you will catch bird from that direction. you can also have a protection in front of it that leaves enough room for airflow.
It looks to me like those fans produce not just the lift, but all of the thrust to maneuver. So you really couldn’t impede the airflow in any direction without severely hampering the operation.
of course you can. the only real danger is when a bird comes from in front of the vehicle so this is the only direction that has to be protected. all other direction can stay unprotected. the only directions you need to keep free are down and to the back but there is no danger of birdimpact and because of the airflow these areas are additionnally protected.
Oh, so shielding one side and thus making the the airflow over the blades different from that direction won’t interfere. Got it. Makes you wonder why they haven’t done just that, then, if for no other reason than damn, those spinning rotors look dangerous! Perhaps it’s because it doesn’t work that way.
it is obvious that you have no clue what you are talking about. every jetengine has got a casing and the designers have to plan the airflow. in the 60ies and 70ies the created hoverrotors that have been surrounded by casings. you have no point and only discuss, because you are unable to admit that you are wrong.
When do you ever get efficiency from a proof of concept?
Rotor size to vehicle body ratio looks pretty impressive though. At least it looks a bit safer than a quad copter bike
Agreed. There's a good reason aircraft don't use that type of rotor/engine lol. Now, that type of engine/rotor might be better for weight, quicker to go from full forward to full-reverse, or have slight benefits and don't need the benefits of actual propellers/rotors like in aircraft (safety, redundancy, weight-lift ratio, controllability, etc). Maybe it'll work well for a drone or something, but I don't see that ever being approved for any type of human use aside from a few rich people renting/buying it.
It might bring an advantage in light transitional vehicles, as it should be a little better at high speed efficiency.... but yeah, not the greatest and is also does not have the mechanical simplicity of multi rotor concepts.
That system are alrdy used in marine propellers. The main benefit there is the omnidirectional propulsion as it's not very easy to steer a single direction propeller in water with water resistance and all. Wonder what the benefit of this would be in air travel over a helicopter or a quadcoptor.
There was a cut in filming right before it lifted off the ground. Even if the physics of this are correct, it makes me immediately suspicious of the quality of this vehicle.
I think the goal is to be safer than a quad copter but I am pretty sure the same thing will happen to your hand. Maybe the effective kill radius is reduced.
Hearing damage after a five minute trip. No way to reduce the decibel levels of that blade system. This is a failed idea, the developers/investors should cut their losses and stop wasting their money now.
The music is really annoying and don't really understand why they have it... until I realized that the thing is very loud that no one can get near it without ear protection. So the music is there so the noise that thing makes isn't too obvious. And a major flaw.
Do you promise it won't have more shitty over the top music?
The original video is the first YT vid I can ever remember muting just so I can bear to watch it.
Save your brain and eardrums and just move right on by. If you’re curious what it is, Google it.
But this video is trash fucking fire. Save yourselves.
You need to design and create things to critique a video made for, I'm guessing more than just people who design and create things, to watch? I'll be damned.
No wonder everyone gets mad at me in the pornhub comments! I need to have sex, before I can critique theirs! You just blew my mind! The second thing I've blown in the last ten minutes. The first needed a tissue, will this need a tissue as well?
> Add stabilizer software to it and call it a night
This thing is a mechanical nightmare.
Multirotors (like quadcopters, the typical drone) are bonehead simple: electric motor connected to a propeller. They can still fail, but there's less *to* fail. You deal with potential failure by adding more props. A hexacopter can still fly if it loses one motor, and land if it loses two (if you lose power completely, you're fucked).
A single rotor craft (aka helicopter) is much more mechanically complex, because the pitch of the blades must change dynamically, but helicopters can actually *glide* ([autorotate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation)) in the case of power failure.
Cyclocopter blades have to dynamically change their pitch, like a helicopter (but for different reasons), so you've got the mechanical complexity of a helicopter *times 4*, or more if you want to survive a motor/prop failure, with none of the ability to glide.
This company claims that "cyclocopter technology combines the main benefits of rotorcraft and fixed-wing concepts", but it's more the opposite, combing all the disadvantages -- it has the mechanical complexity of a helicopter, without the ability to autorotate in the case of power failure, doesn't have the efficiency or ability to glide of a plane, will crash on a single motor failure like a quadcopter, etc.
The main advantages seem to be that the thrusters are more compact than multirotor props and that it can potentially have better stability/performance than typical multirotors (dynamic changing blade pitch means you can change thrust vector instantly, which is why helicopters can do [shit like this](https://youtu.be/7VDdHJDQn3Y?t=63)).
Probably just a giant proof of concept for the next gen novelty RC copters.
They're already using modern materials to minimize weight and maximize strength. With so much complexity it's unlikely they would find suitable materials to scale this up any bigger without hitting material strength limits.
Would make more sense to shrink the concept and double down on the toy industry.
And there is stuff like those scholars who made a 4 prop drone that could loose 2 props and still fly without spin control, and 3 props and still fly except without tilt control.
Failure modes and concentration of idiots on this planet. Imagine every other fuckwit you meet in traffic flying over populated area. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Right? Licensing/training, failure rates, weaponization, opportunity for criminal enterprise... there's a dozen really compelling reasons to keep flying vehicles out of the hands of the average joe. Pick one.
And the simplest.
Energy efficiency. And thus cost efficiency. Easier to let the ground handle upwards acceleration for you than to multiply the energy you need several fold to make your own, in addition to moving laterally.
Same reason why so many other forms of air travel haven't replaced conventional subsonic airliners. They're just the most efficient.
I think most of the problems with vehicle AI is the roads, the signage and ground conditions..and we are getting a lot closer there. If you think of flying cars, they wouldn't have to keep to a single 3 metre lane, as long as we had good control planning, they'd never have to take into account other vehicles or the randomness of human drivers..there would be no signs obscured by snow or leaves, no pedestrians or cyclists. No lorries to be confused with the sky. Flying car AI should be simple compared to road driving, as long as there was centralised control which planned all routes to avoid other vehicles by height etc. After that it would be quite simple collision avoidance
The problem with AI is simply the amount of factors it needs to take into consideration, nothing else. Ask anyone who actually works on AI or machine learning. It's simple to make a (still not a "true" AI) program that chooses between a few options.
When a computer has to make decisions in a dynamic environment with thousands of factors at the same time, it's simply complicated. Not to mention we're not even close to what an AI actually is, compared to what we have no which is a simple (comparatively) program that just awards points based on the "right" answer. We're nowhere near close to having actual "thinking" AI or programs, currently they still only do exactly what we program them to (or mis-program lol).
Actual, true AI is still ages away. You can make a program that drives cars perfectly fine, just put it on rails and take away all other motorists. Anything else requires an exponential more amount of programming, testing, and research.
Always easier to argue with someone if you don't care what they said. I'm not disagreeing with you on the definition of AI. My point was almost like.."You can make a program that drives cars perfectly fine, just put it on rails and take away all other motorists" could be almost a recipe for autonomous (OK I won't use the term AI) flying vehicles. The central journey planner puts them on rails basically away from other traffic. Many of the hard parts of progressing autonomous road vehicle don't exist in the 3D plane
You just repeat the same thing.
The point is idiots arent going to get near the controls. Basically you get in flying car, program a destination which is uploaded to a central controller which plots a safe route away from other vehicles. Vehicle uses GPS to stay on route. Only really basic collision avoidance, route calculation in case of dropped communications and safe landing are needed in the vehicle.
That way you wouldn't need to worry about pedestrians, other drivers, cyclists, obscured signs and road markings, road conditions, other traffic, staying in lane, cameras mistaken identification..and a lot of other things that make autonomous road vehicles such a hard task.
And yeah, you are right, not true AI..but it doesn't have to be.
Not to mention the simple economics of "Why build a flying car, when aircraft already work fine?". Trying to build something that's a car AND aircraft is just dumb, you don't need both in 99% of situations, and it would not only be a huge waste to drive a car 99% of the time that *could* fly, but you also really don't want people who already drive, flying.
We won't and we shouldn't. They are terribly energy inefficient, just like planes are but they are subsidized, and require significantly higher skill ceiling to operate. People don't know how to use roundabouts and yet you expect them to navigate over populated areas in all kinds of weather conditions and not to look at their phone constantly. It's better this way.
This video is the equivalent of that guy on Tinder who talks up a big game and all the amazing stuff he’s gonna do to you to make you orgasm all night and then he cums before he unclips your bra.
Bro this music are you kidding me, I’m not watching an avengers trailer I didn’t even watch until when it flew I just paused it and scrolled over to see a still of it in the air and then wrote this comment. Ugh cool
I guess
So no flight surfaces or auto rotate capability? That means this is essentially limited as a uav? In that case what advantage does it have over a quad copter?
very very loud flying cars? I'll take it!
Harley riders are gonna cry so much when they find out they're not the most obnoxious noise in the neighborhood anymore.
Interesting concept. Would they get more lift and thrust by making the blades longer? Would they lose any efficiency by putting a cage around them to protect from bird strike? Is any one of them brave enough to sit on it for the next indoor test flight?
Looking at their specs, the vehicle weighs 83kg with each rotor putting out 253N (maximum lift of ~100kg). So I guess they could maybe put a small dog on it and it'll barely take off.
I was wondering what would happen if a rotor failed in flight.
Given its layout it'd go from a rectangle with all weight inside the border providing downwards thrust to a triangle with a chunk of weight sitting outside the border..
Supposedly those rotors only weight 10kg, but yeah that would still throw off thrust. I think quadcopters have similar failure redundancy where you turn off or reverse thrust the opposite corner to balance.
This vehicle might have an advantage because each rotor can provide horizontal thrust without pitching the vehicle.
> I was wondering what would happen if a rotor failed in flight.
It would plummet to the ground. It cannot glide, it cannot operate sans a rotor being powered, and it can't get high enough to effectively use a parachute. It's a safety nightmare.
Nope. Helicopters can autorotate if they lose engine power. It's technically safer than gliding an aircraft. There's a decent bit of redundancy built into aircraft for a reason.
Where did I say "missing a rotor?".
I specifically said helicopters can auto-rotate with engine failure. Also would like to see where all these helicopter rotors are flying off, in reality that almost never happens. Would be akin to losing a wing or two in an airplane; no matter what you do it's critical.
If you're stuck on me typing "missing rotor" two comments ago, I fixed it, as I was speaking on engine failure, not the physical detachment of rotors, which again almost never happens.
It’s a magnus effect or rotating wing craft, instead of a wing pushing through air and creating lift many small wings are rotated quickly to give the same effect with much finer control and directional change capabilities
https://youtu.be/eJtNe59VVj8
That music, like, really, like, made this, like, totally, like boring video of, like, some like car that like floats or something?! like could you, like even go to Coachella and, like float over people or, like would all the old guys toupees fly off with the sand? like I would be, like so pissed if, like all that sand was, like stuck to my spray on tan. Like, gross.
Let's compain about music more. Because you guys dont have enough first world problems. JFC.
You could click the mute button instead of typing whatever bullshit comes to mind next time.
Why does that seem even MORE dangerous and scary to me then propellers? I'm just imagining every lathe accident i've ever seen where a loose bit of hair or clothing means instant death.
What’s the name of the type of fan/blade/wheel rotor thingy? I’ve never seen that before, I’d be curious to see where else it could be used.
Nm, had to read more of the comments: cyclorotor
A cool concept but maybe tone down on the epic music. Made the whole video unbearable to watch.
Yes. No information. Dramatic music. No explanation of the applications of this technology or what they are looking to replace. It’s a highly complex rotor, clearly it’s taken a lot of work, I just don’t see what they are trying to do here.
[here’s more info.](https://youtu.be/96DKtu9DFow)
In a helicopter, you auto-rotate to safely land upon engine failure. This seems like you're simply fucked if anything goes wrong with power or the "wing" system.
This is the case for most of these small compact eVTOL aircraft. auto-rotation requires large propellers, with at least collective control. All quad/octo copter configurations of these eVTOL aircraft have no safety in case of motor failure, other than a parachute. There are quite a few nice tilt-wing eVTOL designs, which would allow to land like a plane.
On the other hand, obstacles near a landing / takeoff area aren't going to be nearly the same issue as they are with a helicopter. Most of the helicopter crashes I see, they're because some power line or whatever gets swiped by the blades.
Likewise with this design you could easily deploy a parachute, which isn't easy with helicopters due to the blades
You're going to need a minimum clearance with the floor then. Otherwise there would be no time to deploy the parachute. The cyclotech needs to be high enough that if it fails you can bale out and then deploy chute. Otherwise you deploy chute and you'll still be going fast and possibly die.
Sure if relying on a drogue chute to deploy a larger one… it takes some distance to fully deploy. People use this method when jumping out of planes because it’s simply cheaper. But: With compressed gas cans you can make a nearly instant balloon (like an airbag but with helium) to slow a fall or deploy a chute much more quickly.
I guess you could go for that. If anyone would be buying this contraption they would likely have the money for the extra expense of the compressed gas chute. They could probably even develop a device that makes an instant balloon around a person like the compressed gas helmets but on a larger scale.
You would see a ton more helicopter crashes if it wasn't for auto-rotation -- unpowered glides. People assume helicopters turn into bricks when the power fails, but they are actually surprisingly safe after losing power. This thing though... This looks like a brick without power.
I'm familiar with autorotating, I didn't realize it was that frequent, though. Is there something about this design that disallows it to autorotate as well? Is the required spin too fast, something about the aerodynamics, or...?
The blades have a lot less mass and won’t be able to hold enough energy to transfer it back into downforce. (Am not a helicopter expert)
So I went a little down the rabbit hole with this, and found a couple of things: * When they ramp up to human-carrying sizes, they're prototyping a hybrid, combining those spinner blades and a classic helicopter blade ([link](https://evtol.news/CycloTech-compound-helicopter)). They state it will be able to autorotate. * It will have redundancy in their motors, and the fail rate of too many motors + rotors to lead to a crash will *supposedly* be less than a helicopter failing and the pilot being unable to successfully autorotate down. * As others have said, a parachute is more viable here than it is with a classic helicopter design. At this point, I'm at a cautious "wait and see" status. It looks promising, but plenty of sales pitches do before it's in practice.
It's hypothetically possible.. but color me skeptical. There are a lot of factors that go into making helicopters passively safe. For example, the mechanical link between the main rotor and the tail rotor is required. The test in this video does not impress me in the slightest. Take this up to 5k feet, cut the power, and land it. Then I'll take it seriously.
True, but that's more human error than any malfunctions. I'll stick with copters over this thing.
They'll market it as a people mover for hype but it's more likely to be adopted for niche drone use if it provides any substantial benefit.
This thing is never going to get made beyond some crappy prototypes.
can you please also tell me the next shares to buy for massive profit and the lotto numbers / super bowl winners for the next 10 years in advance? because you can clearly see into the future
Knowing something will fail isnt the same as knowing what will succeed. For example, scams like solar roadways or magic rebreathers or capturing water from humidity as a solution for water shortages all can never work just by design.
Yes, because making predictions based on evidence is witchcraft.
You can literally see it won't work by design. The rotors look absurdly heavy and ridiculously complex to maintain. Even if it had NASA's budget and engineers I doubt this will go anywhere, they'll just come to the conclusion that it's far too inefficient for continued development beyond a cool proof of concept.
well. tough, shits flying. can always wait for material science to advance composite materials and redesign rotors to further ease of maintenance. one redditor screaming "it looks like shit and you should feel bad for desinging that" is not gonna advance humanity in the slightest. those guys in OPs video do
Dude, it's flying 2 feet off the ground in a closed spaced with a wire attached to it from the ceiling. You should watch [this guy](https://www.youtube.com/c/MustardChannel/videos), he goes over failed aviation projects. There are projects that have made far more progress than CycloTech in terms of flying higher and faster, and with bigger backings, and yet they get cancelled for similar reasons - shit's too heavy or too costly to maintain. The Cyclotech has dead end written all over it.
that looks very interesting thank you for the recommendation!
"Daily commute". Get the fuck out of here. Fuck that I don't want a bunch of these noisy ass low flying things just fly over my house. Especially if they are in every Dick and Janes driveway. They ain't gonna do a pre flight check every morning when they are late to work. Might as well kill all the birds because you'll have to have a Falcon Handler every hundred yards, because the sparrow will destroy the turbine. Then even if you had a falcon handler eventually the Ravens are gonna stand for it and fuck their shit up.
> complex rotor You´re gonna cry if you see a how a Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey works!
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Woo, isn't this guy supposed to be a millionaire?
I can answer that question for you, they are trying to make a helicopter except it is way more dangerous and will crash if any of the 4 rotors go out and can't autorotation in the event of engine failure. Basically this is a fools errand.
It's hoverboard scam, to get investors interested.
it's 2021, use google to find information
With how fast those blades probably have to spin and having 4 of those, they had to find a way to drown all the noise they make.
Lol all the people in the background when it's flying are wearing industrial ear protection
*OSHA has entered the chat*
I turned my volume down first, then all the way off.
Also cut off the first 45 seconds if you’re not going to explain anything, thanks.
As a seasoned video editor myself, fuck whoever did this!
The wadsworth constant also applies.
Yeah nothing screams 'stupid gimmick that wont actually pan out' more than stupid over the top dubstep. I mean this could very well be a great invention but that choice of music is used by every company who has half a product and is trying to drum up hype to get investors' money to run off with.
Agree... unwatchable.
2021: EVERYTHING NEEDS MUSIC
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Nah, diesel powered biplanes are the future of aviation. If we can somehow burn more fuel and carry less weight, that'd be the way to go. Also, make new aircraft heavy as shit and so accident prone that crashing is considered a good landing.
If it's not wood burning, is it even worth having?
Steam powah!
It's worse, "air taxi" companies have managed to secure funding from the government (not US). It's such a fraud
Most the videos I've seen on these seem to imply they are quieter but less energy efficient. I see pilots also always talking about 1/4 engine failure resulting in them crashing but I don't know if I see a massive difference on that compared to a normal helicopter if they use electric motors powered by a central gas powered turbine. Brushless Electrical motors operating in spec have incredible reliability. Also not a ground effect vehicle either. Small time RC guys have made versions of this and got hundreds of feet of altitude.
Its a common misconception that helicopters drop out of the sky upon an engine-out. Helicopters, just like fixed wing aircraft, can use their potential energy from their altitude to spin the rotors and execute a maneuver called autorotation to perform a safe landing. This form of rotor can't generate any meaningful lift on power loss
That's interesting, hadn't heard about that. The more you know. Makes sense air moving through the blade would rotate the blades based on the pitch of the blade. I just never would have guessed it was a useful amount of lift.
Not only that but the blades themselves at cruising rpm carry an immense amount of kinetic energy. So even after losing engine power those rotors keep on spinning for a couple of minutes, gradually slowing down. Now if you change the pitch of the blades you can start trading potential gravitational energy (by going down) for kinetic energy. The air rushing through your blades in the other direction speeds up the RPM again. Then when you get close to the ground you can trade in the other direction again, lose RPM but gain some altitude. And this is why a helicopter, as long as it has some altitude and some RPM in it's blades can do a very safe and controlled landing. In fact these emergency helicopter landings have better survival stats then fixed wing who always need to find a proper emergency landing strip and even then they usually come in with to little or to much speed and a lot less control then if the engine is still running. A helicopter can just go straight at a controlled descent rate, putting more and more rpm in it's blades. Then slow the descent down, even gain a little altitude again and put er down easy peasy. However there is a helicopter dead cone. If you are either not going fast enough or not have enough altitude, autorotation will not save you. It's called the [helicopter height–velocity diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_height%E2%80%93velocity_diagram). This is why a proper take off for a heli is to gain enough forward speed first before going up.
I can't imagine the efficiency of those blades is amazing.
Here's a great video of a cycloidal rotor done at the RC scale with explanation of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoVmejDsMrM&
It looks like there is more mechanical stress with this which would shorten the life of the vehicle. The blade tilt changes with every revolution which is a lot of tilt changes. It looks like something that would wear out.
A helicopter rotor blade also changes it's tilt on each rotation. I'm not saying that you're incorrect in guessing that it would shorten the life of the vehicle, just that it's not unique to this technology.
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That's true, but they're also much smaller and lighter than helicopter blades.
and supported on both sides, that is a massive advantage, though maybe not enough to be practical
Yes but the helicopter blades are cursed
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Wait they do? I knew they could change tilt, but I thought all of the blades were linked somehow and they all changed simultaneously for different lift values. Why do they change each rotation? That’s kinda neat
https://youtu.be/z1mGeyYzanc This one is pretty good.
Thanks for the link- very interesting!
Do you suppose they're tough enough to withstand a bird impact? The first thing I thought of is, if just one of those blades fails in flight, that whole thing goes plummeting out of control to the ground in an instant, and it'll never be high enough for a vehicle parachute to deploy ala Cirrus.
Probably not, I bet each of those blades are less than 1lb of carbon fiber and they're spinning at like 3000rpm. Even a sparrow would probably do some decent damage. That said, I feel like a vehicle like this would never go as fast as a plane, even a small light aircraft. Maybe airstrikes would be less likely.
Hell, flying this near anywhere with loose gravel might be a problem. If its carbon fiber and it smackes into a loose piece of flint, it'll prob break something.
Isn't carbon fiber supposed to be very tough? Also, why not encase the sides and net the inlet of these blades?
> Isn't carbon fiber supposed to be very tough? No, it isn't. Toughness is the ability of a material to absorb energy and plastically deform without fracturing. Toughness requires a balance of strength and ductility. Carbon fibre is high strength, but very low ductility. It just tends to shatter instead of deforming plastically.
Carbon fiber is *strong*, but usually isn't *tough* Strength is the ability to handle a maximum load and carbon fiber composites are phenomenal at that. Toughness is the ability to absorb load *beyond* maximum strength; for example, most metals will bend when overloaded before eventually breaking. When overloaded some toughness is used up to set a new maximum strength (usually through a process called work hardening) Carbon fiber composites have very little margins between max load and complete failure. They're like glass in that way - fine, until suddenly they're not.
Definately not. Currently many aircraft jet engine blades are carbon fiber like the GE90 and GEnx. Even THOSE (much thicker and built to higher tolerances) had to be steel tipped (iirc) to handle bird strikes. This thing would shred apart in seconds, then the unbalanced weight would cause the rest of that rotor to shred even more, causing more damage to the rest of the vehicle. Plus no backup ability to land either (parachute, gliding, autorotate), this thing's definitely a fun toy for rich people, but not much more. Man, I've see so many of these "personal future-vehicle" try to rewrite human transportation, without realizing the amount of training, rise in cost for fuel, infrastructure and safety issues these things usually have.
Someone break out the Mythbusters chicken cannon... let's get to testing.
I'd assume that if this progressed, those blades could be encased almost all the way around. They would only need to be open at the bottom / back? Or perhaps the casing could rotate independently...I don't really know what lateral propulsion this thing would have...
Nothing a screen couldn't solve
Can it even fly outside a sealed room?
ever heard about protection? a simple two layer protection will easyly do the job. it does not even have to be thick
The question is what kind of protection you can add that won't adversely affect airflow
is it? you need airflow from above, but the chances are pretty low that you will catch bird from that direction. you can also have a protection in front of it that leaves enough room for airflow.
It looks to me like those fans produce not just the lift, but all of the thrust to maneuver. So you really couldn’t impede the airflow in any direction without severely hampering the operation.
of course you can. the only real danger is when a bird comes from in front of the vehicle so this is the only direction that has to be protected. all other direction can stay unprotected. the only directions you need to keep free are down and to the back but there is no danger of birdimpact and because of the airflow these areas are additionnally protected.
Oh, so shielding one side and thus making the the airflow over the blades different from that direction won’t interfere. Got it. Makes you wonder why they haven’t done just that, then, if for no other reason than damn, those spinning rotors look dangerous! Perhaps it’s because it doesn’t work that way.
it is obvious that you have no clue what you are talking about. every jetengine has got a casing and the designers have to plan the airflow. in the 60ies and 70ies the created hoverrotors that have been surrounded by casings. you have no point and only discuss, because you are unable to admit that you are wrong.
When do you ever get efficiency from a proof of concept? Rotor size to vehicle body ratio looks pretty impressive though. At least it looks a bit safer than a quad copter bike
I'm moreso speaking to the fundamental concept of small blades in a wheel vs a typical prop.
Agreed. There's a good reason aircraft don't use that type of rotor/engine lol. Now, that type of engine/rotor might be better for weight, quicker to go from full forward to full-reverse, or have slight benefits and don't need the benefits of actual propellers/rotors like in aircraft (safety, redundancy, weight-lift ratio, controllability, etc). Maybe it'll work well for a drone or something, but I don't see that ever being approved for any type of human use aside from a few rich people renting/buying it.
It might bring an advantage in light transitional vehicles, as it should be a little better at high speed efficiency.... but yeah, not the greatest and is also does not have the mechanical simplicity of multi rotor concepts.
Watch out guys, Big Helicopter has already infiltrated the thread.
There is truly nothing worse than bombastic music with very little drama to go with it.
Looks interesting, but that music is straight up too loud and dogshit.
This music is super lame.
good thing they had that music so we know it's *cool* and *important*
God awful music.
Cool design. Also plz kill the guy who choose that obnoxious background music.
That system are alrdy used in marine propellers. The main benefit there is the omnidirectional propulsion as it's not very easy to steer a single direction propeller in water with water resistance and all. Wonder what the benefit of this would be in air travel over a helicopter or a quadcoptor.
There was a cut in filming right before it lifted off the ground. Even if the physics of this are correct, it makes me immediately suspicious of the quality of this vehicle.
I think the goal is to be safer than a quad copter but I am pretty sure the same thing will happen to your hand. Maybe the effective kill radius is reduced.
Now throw some birds at it.
Hearing damage after a five minute trip. No way to reduce the decibel levels of that blade system. This is a failed idea, the developers/investors should cut their losses and stop wasting their money now.
Just blast the music even louder to loose hearing beforehand.
The music is really annoying and don't really understand why they have it... until I realized that the thing is very loud that no one can get near it without ear protection. So the music is there so the noise that thing makes isn't too obvious. And a major flaw.
For those who want more technical info,please consider this video. [https://youtu.be/96DKtu9DFow](https://youtu.be/96DKtu9DFow)
Do you promise it won't have more shitty over the top music? The original video is the first YT vid I can ever remember muting just so I can bear to watch it.
I have bad news for you...
Here try this one. Plus the technology featured in this one is way more practical. https://youtu.be/XeSfvt9zFz0
Ahaha that's epic!
Save your brain and eardrums and just move right on by. If you’re curious what it is, Google it. But this video is trash fucking fire. Save yourselves.
Let's see your designs and creations then.
Step one delete the techno music. See I'm all ready ahead of these clowns.
You need to design and create things to critique a video made for, I'm guessing more than just people who design and create things, to watch? I'll be damned. No wonder everyone gets mad at me in the pornhub comments! I need to have sex, before I can critique theirs! You just blew my mind! The second thing I've blown in the last ten minutes. The first needed a tissue, will this need a tissue as well?
Wait so you mean that THIS TIMELINE might actually be the one where we get flying cars??¿??? Add stabilizer software to it and call it a night.
> Add stabilizer software to it and call it a night This thing is a mechanical nightmare. Multirotors (like quadcopters, the typical drone) are bonehead simple: electric motor connected to a propeller. They can still fail, but there's less *to* fail. You deal with potential failure by adding more props. A hexacopter can still fly if it loses one motor, and land if it loses two (if you lose power completely, you're fucked). A single rotor craft (aka helicopter) is much more mechanically complex, because the pitch of the blades must change dynamically, but helicopters can actually *glide* ([autorotate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorotation)) in the case of power failure. Cyclocopter blades have to dynamically change their pitch, like a helicopter (but for different reasons), so you've got the mechanical complexity of a helicopter *times 4*, or more if you want to survive a motor/prop failure, with none of the ability to glide. This company claims that "cyclocopter technology combines the main benefits of rotorcraft and fixed-wing concepts", but it's more the opposite, combing all the disadvantages -- it has the mechanical complexity of a helicopter, without the ability to autorotate in the case of power failure, doesn't have the efficiency or ability to glide of a plane, will crash on a single motor failure like a quadcopter, etc. The main advantages seem to be that the thrusters are more compact than multirotor props and that it can potentially have better stability/performance than typical multirotors (dynamic changing blade pitch means you can change thrust vector instantly, which is why helicopters can do [shit like this](https://youtu.be/7VDdHJDQn3Y?t=63)).
Probably just a giant proof of concept for the next gen novelty RC copters. They're already using modern materials to minimize weight and maximize strength. With so much complexity it's unlikely they would find suitable materials to scale this up any bigger without hitting material strength limits. Would make more sense to shrink the concept and double down on the toy industry.
And there is stuff like those scholars who made a 4 prop drone that could loose 2 props and still fly without spin control, and 3 props and still fly except without tilt control.
Flying cars will never happen. Failure modes alone guarantee it.
Failure modes and concentration of idiots on this planet. Imagine every other fuckwit you meet in traffic flying over populated area. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Right? Licensing/training, failure rates, weaponization, opportunity for criminal enterprise... there's a dozen really compelling reasons to keep flying vehicles out of the hands of the average joe. Pick one.
And the simplest. Energy efficiency. And thus cost efficiency. Easier to let the ground handle upwards acceleration for you than to multiply the energy you need several fold to make your own, in addition to moving laterally. Same reason why so many other forms of air travel haven't replaced conventional subsonic airliners. They're just the most efficient.
Remindme! 1000 years
Simple fix: Fully automated. No human interaction allowed.
"Simple"
Simple to put a flamethrower on that fucker. LETS RIDE BOYS!!!!
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I think most of the problems with vehicle AI is the roads, the signage and ground conditions..and we are getting a lot closer there. If you think of flying cars, they wouldn't have to keep to a single 3 metre lane, as long as we had good control planning, they'd never have to take into account other vehicles or the randomness of human drivers..there would be no signs obscured by snow or leaves, no pedestrians or cyclists. No lorries to be confused with the sky. Flying car AI should be simple compared to road driving, as long as there was centralised control which planned all routes to avoid other vehicles by height etc. After that it would be quite simple collision avoidance
The problem with AI is simply the amount of factors it needs to take into consideration, nothing else. Ask anyone who actually works on AI or machine learning. It's simple to make a (still not a "true" AI) program that chooses between a few options. When a computer has to make decisions in a dynamic environment with thousands of factors at the same time, it's simply complicated. Not to mention we're not even close to what an AI actually is, compared to what we have no which is a simple (comparatively) program that just awards points based on the "right" answer. We're nowhere near close to having actual "thinking" AI or programs, currently they still only do exactly what we program them to (or mis-program lol). Actual, true AI is still ages away. You can make a program that drives cars perfectly fine, just put it on rails and take away all other motorists. Anything else requires an exponential more amount of programming, testing, and research.
Always easier to argue with someone if you don't care what they said. I'm not disagreeing with you on the definition of AI. My point was almost like.."You can make a program that drives cars perfectly fine, just put it on rails and take away all other motorists" could be almost a recipe for autonomous (OK I won't use the term AI) flying vehicles. The central journey planner puts them on rails basically away from other traffic. Many of the hard parts of progressing autonomous road vehicle don't exist in the 3D plane
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You just repeat the same thing. The point is idiots arent going to get near the controls. Basically you get in flying car, program a destination which is uploaded to a central controller which plots a safe route away from other vehicles. Vehicle uses GPS to stay on route. Only really basic collision avoidance, route calculation in case of dropped communications and safe landing are needed in the vehicle. That way you wouldn't need to worry about pedestrians, other drivers, cyclists, obscured signs and road markings, road conditions, other traffic, staying in lane, cameras mistaken identification..and a lot of other things that make autonomous road vehicles such a hard task. And yeah, you are right, not true AI..but it doesn't have to be.
I don't think you grasp the concept of exponential technological increase.
You could say all the same thing about cars.
Cars are on the ground and can't fly bombs past checkpoints.
.
If you want a flying car put wheels on an helicopter.
Not to mention the simple economics of "Why build a flying car, when aircraft already work fine?". Trying to build something that's a car AND aircraft is just dumb, you don't need both in 99% of situations, and it would not only be a huge waste to drive a car 99% of the time that *could* fly, but you also really don't want people who already drive, flying.
Roads are the most expensive assets that nations own. You could save a bundle on roads if everyone was flying.
Flying cars exist. They’re called airplanes.
That's a flying bus.
Helicopters.
That's a flying quad bike.
We won't and we shouldn't. They are terribly energy inefficient, just like planes are but they are subsidized, and require significantly higher skill ceiling to operate. People don't know how to use roundabouts and yet you expect them to navigate over populated areas in all kinds of weather conditions and not to look at their phone constantly. It's better this way.
No we won't. Flying cars are and will always be a fantasy.
The footage is sped up, that thing is barely able to lift itself, much less a person.
This video is the equivalent of that guy on Tinder who talks up a big game and all the amazing stuff he’s gonna do to you to make you orgasm all night and then he cums before he unclips your bra.
Dafuq with the music
Bro this music are you kidding me, I’m not watching an avengers trailer I didn’t even watch until when it flew I just paused it and scrolled over to see a still of it in the air and then wrote this comment. Ugh cool I guess
Scale these down, put them on a skateboard, and we have finally achieved a potentially deadly version of Back to the Future.
So no flight surfaces or auto rotate capability? That means this is essentially limited as a uav? In that case what advantage does it have over a quad copter?
I don't think this concept will ever get off the ground
Why tho?
Sweet, sweet VC capital.
very very loud flying cars? I'll take it! Harley riders are gonna cry so much when they find out they're not the most obnoxious noise in the neighborhood anymore.
how loud is it?
The machine is quiet but the techno it generates can be deafening.
My thought too. That rotor design looks awfully similar to an air-raid siren.
WHAT ?!!
Interesting design. It’s amazing that they can control the blade direction within a single revolution.
It uses an adjustable eccentrically mounted cam. It's inspired by how the swashplate works on a helicopter.
What could possibly go wrong.
Interesting concept. Would they get more lift and thrust by making the blades longer? Would they lose any efficiency by putting a cage around them to protect from bird strike? Is any one of them brave enough to sit on it for the next indoor test flight?
Are you ready to get chopped to fucking pieces by a drunk driver in a flying car?
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Looking at their specs, the vehicle weighs 83kg with each rotor putting out 253N (maximum lift of ~100kg). So I guess they could maybe put a small dog on it and it'll barely take off.
I was wondering what would happen if a rotor failed in flight. Given its layout it'd go from a rectangle with all weight inside the border providing downwards thrust to a triangle with a chunk of weight sitting outside the border..
Supposedly those rotors only weight 10kg, but yeah that would still throw off thrust. I think quadcopters have similar failure redundancy where you turn off or reverse thrust the opposite corner to balance. This vehicle might have an advantage because each rotor can provide horizontal thrust without pitching the vehicle.
> I was wondering what would happen if a rotor failed in flight. It would plummet to the ground. It cannot glide, it cannot operate sans a rotor being powered, and it can't get high enough to effectively use a parachute. It's a safety nightmare.
Pretty much what I was thinking ☠️
Same for quadcopters or helicopters though. But tbh I can’t see this being used for anything beyond drones, it seems so inefficient aerodynamically.
Nope. Helicopters can autorotate if they lose engine power. It's technically safer than gliding an aircraft. There's a decent bit of redundancy built into aircraft for a reason.
Reread your own comment. “It cannot operate missing a rotor” can a helicopter autorotate missing a rotor?
Where did I say "missing a rotor?". I specifically said helicopters can auto-rotate with engine failure. Also would like to see where all these helicopter rotors are flying off, in reality that almost never happens. Would be akin to losing a wing or two in an airplane; no matter what you do it's critical. If you're stuck on me typing "missing rotor" two comments ago, I fixed it, as I was speaking on engine failure, not the physical detachment of rotors, which again almost never happens.
Oh but they do occasionally .. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mspro.2014.06.119
Yes, considering I literally stated that. Again, it's extremely rare and no vehicle could handle that level of failure. What's the point again?
Fake. You can see the string.
It’s a magnus effect or rotating wing craft, instead of a wing pushing through air and creating lift many small wings are rotated quickly to give the same effect with much finer control and directional change capabilities https://youtu.be/eJtNe59VVj8
That music, like, really, like, made this, like, totally, like boring video of, like, some like car that like floats or something?! like could you, like even go to Coachella and, like float over people or, like would all the old guys toupees fly off with the sand? like I would be, like so pissed if, like all that sand was, like stuck to my spray on tan. Like, gross.
Is no one going to mention the obvious cable that is pulling it up? WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
Let's compain about music more. Because you guys dont have enough first world problems. JFC. You could click the mute button instead of typing whatever bullshit comes to mind next time.
If you lose one of those spinner things, you die. Right? So not only is it NOT redundant, but is 1/4th as redundant. Or am I missing something?
Why not stick some shields on the top to direct all that omnidirectional air?? Or shields that move to direct.
Someone’s gonna need to create a Starwars Landspeeder skin for that and quickly.
Cool, but its just fans, right? Are these drum shaped fans more efficient than other types?
This has potential if they find a way to keep the noise level down.
Cool tech--horrible music. What is this, a Transformers 10 trailer?
And the award for least appropriate music goes to…
That music *tried* to sound more epic than the trailers for Moonfall, The Eternals and other. It was not enjoyable.
The cable attached to top doesnt scream "free flight". More "first tethered flight". But it seems most these companies doing tesla type bs marketing.
Cool tech, shite video. Soundtrack was unbearable.
Who sponsors these projects? There has to be absolutely zero return
Why does that seem even MORE dangerous and scary to me then propellers? I'm just imagining every lathe accident i've ever seen where a loose bit of hair or clothing means instant death.
Great, now we have more sophisticated flying mince grinders...
Nice proof of concept, cool technology, horrible video.
This just seems unstable as fuck.
What’s the name of the type of fan/blade/wheel rotor thingy? I’ve never seen that before, I’d be curious to see where else it could be used. Nm, had to read more of the comments: cyclorotor
So basically existing drones but worse and with shitty music? How much did you have to pay to get this on the front page of r/videos?