Aircraft

Rotor R550X: A full-size autonomous helicopter anyone can buy

View 4 Images
The R550X: a full-sized autonomous helicopter anyone can buy
Rotor Technologies
The R550X: a full-sized autonomous helicopter anyone can buy
Rotor Technologies
Oil rig deliveries: an early expected use case
Rotor Technologies
Rotor says there's a lot of demand from farmers for an autonomous crop-spraying platform of this size
Rotor Technologies
It's expected to see service in firefighting missions
Rotor Technologies
View gallery - 4 images

Rotor Technologies is now in production on a full-size unmanned helicopter for civilian use. Based on the Robinson R44 Raven II, the R550X flies for more than three hours, at speeds up to 150 mph (241 km/h), carrying up to 1,200 lb (550 kg) of cargo.

According to Torklaw, helicopters have about 9.84 crashes per 100,000 hours of flight time. That's curiously low, given their reputation and the fact that "general aircraft" have 7.28 crashes per 100,000 hours. But still, they're notoriously tricky to fly, and there are a growing number of projects attempting to make them much easier, using simple fly-by wire joystick controls, or even simpler one-finger tablet control schemes.

Safest of all, of course, is to leave the humans on the ground altogether, and that's what New Hampshire company Rotor Technologies has been focused on from its modest hangar at Nashua Airport, about 30 miles (50 km) outside Boston. It's been flying two R22-based autonomous chopper prototypes since December last year, across nine locations in New Hampshire, Idaho and Oregon. It wrapped up its test campaign in November, having logged "more than 20 hours" of flight time.

That doesn't sound like an awful lot of test flight time to us, but either way, citing heavy demand from the agricultural sector in particular, Rotor is putting a product into production. The R550X will effectively be an enormous autonomous drone, with enough sensors and intelligence on board to fly at night and in limited visibility, including "instrument meteorological conditions."

Where a standard R44 has four seats, the R550X has nothing but a big cargo bay, allowing it to carry more than twice the "effective payload" of the standard helicopter, says Rotor. Command and control range is up to 10 miles (16 km) from a ground-based satellite communications relay, or more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from an airborne relay or through LTE comms.

If communications are lost – unlikely, says Rotor, since it runs six different data links simultaneously – you can choose a course of action, either getting it to loiter and wait for comms to reconnect, or having it return to base along a pre-determined path. In case of emergency, it's got a "flight termination system capable of ending a flight immediately," which frankly sounds less than ideal.

Buyers will spec it out with a range of mission payloads including cameras, gimbals, sensors and other black boxes. Probably the most popular early use case would appear to be crop spraying, in which Rotor promises cost and productivity benefits. But it's also going to get used for cargo deliveries to offshore platforms, firefighting missions and presumably other land-based delivery tasks.

How can this possibly be legal, you ask? Well, right now, Rotor is planning to deliver these aircraft in a state ready for immediate evaluation for a Special Airworthiness Certificate, which will allow them to be flown as experimental aircraft in most countries.

Eventually, the company is seeking a type certificate from the FAA, which will allow these things to ferry people around in commercial operations as well. Remarkable stuff!

Rotor hasn't nominated a price, but says it expects deliveries and the start of commercial operations to begin in 2024.

Source: Rotor Technologies

View gallery - 4 images
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flipboard
  • LinkedIn
6 comments
paul314
I wonder how these things do in really bad weather, where you might plausibly send them in situations where you wouldn't want to risk human pilots/crew/
jerryd
I want to see how hard to get a permit to fly these drones in the US as drones are very restricted now thankfully.
And thankfully delivery drones seem to have failed as we really don't need 1,000s of drones flying over us..
robertswww
Let's hope no one tries to re-create the famous helicopter scene from the pre-title sequence of the movie, "For Your Eyes Only" where Ernst Stavro Blofeld says to James Bond, "You are now flying remote control airways".
https://youtu.be/_B2Fk5DLrGA?t=80
Karmudjun
Yeah, right - Almost anyone can buy at ANY price, right? We already have drone operators flying over people's backyards and looking into windows. Now we need to worry about the wealthy flying nearly full size "news choppers" around town?
Rusty
I've been flying UAV's (drones) for years. I'm one of the odd ones that only flies where it is legal to fly, always checks the radar 24 app to make sure there are no aircraft in the area, will land if I hear or see an aircraft flying, use a strobe at night etc.
But, considering the dunderheads I read about with their toys flying where they aren't suppose to, I'd want anyone getting one of these to have to have an pilots license!
Captain Danger
@robertswww
Thanks for the link!