Jetson Founder Tomasz Patan is clearly getting very comfortable with the Jetson One eVTOL's flight control system ... Watch him wrench the controls around to show off how sharply – and safely – this thing can handle tight turns in flight.
Multicopter drones were revolutionary little gadgets when they started to appear on the scene for a number of reasons, but one was their highly automated fly-by-wire control systems. No human could manually control motor speeds on upwards of four rotors simultaneously, but a sensor-equipped flight control system certainly could – hence, drones like the DJI Phantom were able to automatically lift off and land, maintain altitude if required, and self-balance against wind gusts to hover in place, while also responding quickly to a pilot's commands.
This is part of the promise with eVTOL aircraft – some of which, like the Jetson One, are really best described as great big multicopter drones a person can sit in.
Most of the flight videos we've seen, though, are ... well, not that exciting, other than for the sheer geeky thrill of seeing a new style of personal aircraft emerging from its Wright Brothers days. People seem to use the controls pretty gingerly and play things a little too safe to make them fun to watch.
That's not surprising, mind you – imagine being in the cockpit of one of these things, whirling rotors screaming all around you, just high enough off the ground to really hurt yourself if you dropped ... Yeah, I'd be pretty dang ginger on the stick as well.
Which is what makes Jetson's latest video so remarkable. Patan has clearly logged some flight hours in the Jetson One, to the point where he's become comfortable enough to really throw it around. Check out the video below; some of the turns here look like he's flat-out slamming the control stick from side to side, with the flight control system doing a remarkable job of maintaining a stable – but very low – altitude.
It's some of the most dynamic flight we've seen from an eVTOL with a human on board, and some of the closest we've seen to answering the question that probably launched the eVTOL sector: hey, what would it be like to ride around in a racing drone?
The company claims the perfectly-named Jetson One is "the first affordable eVTOL on the market," and that's probably fair enough. This plucky 115-kg (253-lb) machine can fly for about 20 minutes on a battery charge, lifting pilots up to 95 kg (210 lb) up to altitudes "above 1,500 ft" (457 m) and achieving a limited to speed of 102 km/h (63 mph) in level flight.
It uses LiDAR-enabled terrain tracking, among other systems, to know where the ground, the trees and other inconvenient obstacles are, and the flight control system makes decisions accordingly to attempt to keep pilots safe.
As far as "affordable ..." Well, the full price is now US$128,000 per unit, excluding taxes, so you can make your own ruling on that. And as far as being "on the market," Jetson's entire production runs for 2024 and 2025 have already sold out, so there's a fair old wait ahead of anyone wanting to jump in one of these things and experience it for themselves.
But it's certainly remarkable to see how confident Patan has become with the machine, and how aggressively it can clearly be flown. It's definitely starting to move beyond the "zero-gravity dune buggy" impression we got when we first saw it in flight. Very impressive!
Source: Jetson
