VTOL

After being granted FAA certification for package delivery by drone last year, UPS Flight Forward has now joined forces with German drone maker Wingcopter to get a new breed of vertical takeoff and landing delivery drones into US skies.

Another stunning milestone for the Jetman team, as pilot Vince Reffet demonstrates the new ability to take off from the ground, then hit the gas on the carbon jet wing's four turbine engines and soar away into the sky.

The latest variant of the Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft recently completed its maiden flight. Designed to replace the US Navy's C-2A Greyhound cargo aircraft, the CMV-22B Osprey will be used to transport high-priority cargoes for carrier fleets.

While propeller planes certainly do have their place, sometimes the extra speed and thrust of a jet engine is what's really needed. Dallas-based FusionFlight has applied that sort of thinking to quadcopter-style drones, resulting in the AB5 JetQuad.

With the ability to carry up to 250 kg of payload at speeds up to 80 km/h, the 12-rotor Seraph is Britain's leading electric VTOL air taxi candidate. Vertical Aerospace has released video of this chunky bird in flight.

Six months after revealing its five-seat electric VTOL aircraft, German startup Lilium has shown it flying at speeds over 100 km/h (62 mph), and moving between VTOL and winged flight, in a new video.

In Singapore for Intelligent Transport Systems World Congress, Volocopter has shown off a first full-scale prototype of what it calls a VoloPort, the terminal for the flying taxi service it envisions for city centers of the future.

China's MMC UAV launched a new hydrogen-powered VTOL drone at InterGEO 2019 in Germany last week, that has a flight time of up to 15 hours.

Automotive design legend Frank Stephenson speaks about biomimicry and the Lilium project in part two of our interview.

Bell has joined the cargo drone space with its APT 70, which has just nailed its first autonomous test flight.

One of the best ways to extend the range of a VTOL aircraft is to add wings for horizontal flight, and Drone Volt's Heliplane brings this kind of thinking to the industrial drone market, offering long flight endurance times, 1.6-kg (3.5-lb) payload capacity and VTOL/hover capabilities.

Japanese electronics giant NEC has been working with a company called Cartivator to design, build and test VTOL air taxi concepts. Now the two companies have demonstrated a multi-seat manned multicopter, a step toward a flying car future Japan believes will arrive around 2030.