DANAUS IS DEVELOPING THE PILOTED KOLIBRY EVTOL GYROCOPTER DRONE
Description
The KOLIBRY is an ultracompact-ultralight VTOL personal gyrocopter. Its empty weight is 250 lbs with everything attached, including electric hub motors, cables and controllers (130 lbs). It carries a 200 lbs 5’-9” tall pilot and a 120 lbs power package of electric batteries. Its total weight is 570 lbs. It measures 6.5’x6.03’x6.56’ (L x W x H) and in diagonal 8.50’.
It has a 6.03’Ø 8-blade lift-rotor on the top, a 3.42’Ø 6-blade pushing thrust-rotor on the rear and 1.33’Ø 5-blade side-rotors built into each its four impact landing wheels, all driven by electric motors independently. A 120 lbs LiPo battery package—built into the under carriage fixed wings—powers the drive motors.
The landing wheels have elastomeric fan blades as spokes to absorb a 5G landing impact. Between the wheels and the fixed wings, four flaps assist in aircraft attitude and flight control, including hovering for counter-torque by opposing angles at left and right. The wheel rotors counter the lift-rotor’s torque exerted on the fuselage as well. The noise-to-ground is limited by very low rotor speeds of long-chord thin-airfoil rotor-blades (e.g., NACA 7501 on the lift-rotor).
Upon reaching cruising altitude, the thrust-rotor is gradually powered up and the lift-rotor is powered down. The vertical-horizontal flight transitions are therefore smooth. During cruising at sufficient speed, the unpowered lift-rotor auto-rotates, acting like a 6.03’Ø canopy wing. Upon an all-power-off emergency landing, the KOLIBRY relies on lift-rotor auto-rotation and uses the flaps as spoilers. The significant rotational inertia of the ring makes auto-rotation practical.
The KOLIBRY is built using acrylic, aluminum, engineered plastics and carbon fiber composites. The cabin has two transparent side doors. The framed spherical shape cabin protects the pilot in crash landing, alleviating the need for carrying parachute. The pilot has a near 360° view.
The lift and thrust rotors, built in two-way swivel stem, use electric hub motors. The thrust-rotor tilting (up-and-down or left-and-right), the flaps tilting (up-or-down) and the wheel rotors, via variable speed, collectively control cross-wind and flight attitude. The 6° lift-rotor tilts similarly left-right and forward-reverse by 6° ea. w. Computer program assists in pilot input optimization to make flying the KOLIBRY intuitive, safe and easy. The fixed pilot seat, which acts as a diagonal brace between the cabin floor and wall, ensures that the common center-of-mass is near the cabin center, allowing for a 15% variation in pilot weight and position.
The rotors are ringed for the safety of people on the ground and to reduce lateral airflow over the blades, as well as to reduce rotor noise, to strengthen the blades and to ensure auto-rotation. The KOLIBRY normally airborne with vertical axis remaining vertical within a 12°. The cabin is ventilated through vent-holes in the cabin. The KOLIBRY can roll on smooth ground powered or pushed or pulled unpowered. It fits in a common home garage taking a sports utility vehicle (SUV) space (6.03’Wx6.50’Lx6.56’H). The lift-rotor ground clearance is 6.25’, thus it shall not be run when people are 15’ close by in the ground.
THE DANAUS VISION
Remember when you were a child and wanted to fly with grandpa, land on the lake, angle for fish sitting in your flying machine, learning from grandpa how to fly, explore nature from above, having fun flying with the birds, receiving your toy car present from grandma drop-shipped to your garden from the sky and wave to your brother leaving home from the backyard flying off…
Danaus first makes a small VTOL for a single pilot or for heavy package drone delivery.
Then it makes a four-seat VTOL which still fits in an 8.5′ cube and thus in your garage.
Then we covert these to GPS guided autonomous drones with added functions.
We will make dreams come true, so you can be a child again and big-boy finally.
KOLIBRY is Trade Mark (TM) to Danaus, LLC. Patent Pending Worldwide. Copyright(C), Danaus, LLC 2018