CycloTech shows pictures of first flight demonstrator as it prepares to begin testing programme

CycloTech has released pic­tures of its first flight demon­stra­tor, as it begins to assem­ble a de-scaled ver­sion ahead of test­ing before the end of this year.

The research and devel­op­ment com­pa­ny is devel­op­ing what it says is a ground-break­ing propul­sion sys­tem for VTOL air­craft and drones. It con­sists of Cyclo­gy­ro rotors – which CycloTech say are the most agile and can also be used as aux­il­iary sys­tems to enhance con­ven­tion­al rotor­craft or fixed-wing con­cepts.

Speak­ing to eVTOLInsights.com, CycloTech CEO Hans-Georg Kin­sky talked about the timescales of the demon­stra­tor, which will sole­ly be a tech­ni­cal proof of con­cept to show the abil­i­ty to con­trol the Cyclo­gy­ro tech­nol­o­gy and agili­ty of the propul­sion sys­tem.

Kin­sky said: “We cur­rent­ly have rotor pro­to­types which are ful­ly test­ed and were also in a wind tun­nel at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow in Novem­ber last year, in order to see its full effects in for­ward flight sim­u­la­tion. And we found that the pow­er demand is 50 per less when com­pared to hov­er mode. We already have about 99 per cent of all the parts in-house, such as the chas­sis, land­ing gear and parts for the rotors.

“For the rest of the year, we’ll be assem­bling the demon­stra­tor until about Octo­ber, and doing the sys­tem checks in Novem­ber. We’ve had to do the flight con­trol sys­tem our­selves, because the mar­ket cur­rent­ly hasn’t got any­thing else like this, so we are work­ing with a team from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Ger­man Army in Munich. We also have a hard­ware-in-the-loop sys­tem which allows us to pre-test every­thing.”

CycloTech’s de-scaled flight demon­stra­tor will have a MTOW of 82kg and mea­sure more than 2.5 metres in length and over 1.8 metres in width. Its cruise speed will be about 50km/h, with a range of 5km and have a flight time of between two and five min­utes.

Kin­sky said that the demon­stra­tor will advance to slow for­ward flight by the begin­ning of 2021, before start­ing to increase its speed.

“We want to prove that our flight con­trol sys­tem is capa­ble of coor­di­nat­ing four rotors, and flex­i­ble enough to man­age six, eight or even 12 rotors,” he said. “But also show that it is able to con­trol every­thing which is relat­ed to those rotors, and sta­ble enough to tran­si­tion from hov­er mode to for­ward flight.

“This demon­stra­tor is noth­ing close to ser­i­al pro­duc­tion or being cer­ti­fied as there is quite a long way to go, because it’s a com­plete­ly new tech­nol­o­gy.”

A Cyclo­gy­ro rotor con­sists of sev­er­al wings rotat­ing around a cen­tral axis, which are con­nect­ed to a freely rotat­ing hub. An eccen­tric posi­tion of the hub caus­es a peri­od­ic change of the angle of attack of each wing dur­ing one rev­o­lu­tion.

This accel­er­ates the air­flow and gen­er­ates thrust, with the alter­ing of the hub allow­ing instant con­trol of mag­ni­tude and direc­tion.

Kin­sky says the Cyclo­gy­ro tech­nol­o­gy will have a com­bi­na­tion of ben­e­fits from rotor­craft and fixed-wing con­cepts for the Urban Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket. He added that the cost-ben­e­fit cal­cu­la­tions based on the Air­bus Vahana con­fig­u­ra­tion trade study demon­strate a 20 per cent cost reduc­tion com­pared to tilt-wing or full elec­tric heli­copters.

“Cyclo­gy­ro rotors com­bines the best of both worlds”, Kin­sky said. “First of all, there is its VTOL abil­i­ty for equipped air­craft which is a major cri­te­ria for Urban Air Mobil­i­ty. Then you have its high agili­ty which we think is the biggest ben­e­fit, because you have to oper­ate in nar­row areas and the poten­tial of cross­winds with big­ger con­cepts.

“You have a sta­ble tran­si­tion because you don’t need to move the air­craft at all, so the only thing enabling it to fly is the rotors which has the same rota­tion­al speed and direc­tion. In com­par­i­son to a mul­ti-copter sys­tem, you also have a more effi­cient for­ward flight.”

Kin­sky added that the com­pa­ny is also look­ing into drone con­cepts, with an exam­ple being a high pre­ci­sion drone where CycloTech would use its tech­nol­o­gy as an aux­il­iary sys­tem, for faster entry into the mar­ket. He added that the com­pa­ny plans to intro­duce the tech­nol­o­gy into the UAV and UAM mar­ket by 2024, start­ing with mid-range UAV appli­ca­tions, aux­il­iary sys­tems for lift and cruise con­cepts and then a main propul­sion sys­tem for a four-seater air taxi.

CycloTech is also look­ing for addi­tion­al invest­ment – between €7 mil­lion and €10 mil­lion – to com­plete its de-scaled flight demon­stra­tor and mar­ket-ready indus­try UAV appli­ca­tion. It has already raised €13 mil­lion, with €8.5m from investors and €4.5m in grants, which includes €1.8m from the Aus­tri­an Research Agency.

“As soon as we find a cor­po­ra­tion part­ner, then in the next three years we hope to have a prod­uct ready to bring to mar­ket,” Kin­sky said.

“We’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on two dif­fer­ent UAV appli­ca­tions. If you look at the com­plete UAV mar­ket, the major­i­ty is for mil­i­tary use but as the com­mer­cial mar­ket is evolv­ing we’re focus­ing on this one. With­in this, it will be par­tic­u­lar­ly ener­gy and infra­struc­ture inspec­tions – which means pow­er lines, rail­roads, oil and gas pipelines.

“So one con­cept would be a high agili­ty drone for wind­mill and oil plat­form inspec­tions. By the end of the year, we hope to have a full spec­i­fi­ca­tion and can then start to con­tact drone and propul­sion sys­tem man­u­fac­tur­ers about work­ing togeth­er to devel­op this drone.”

For more infor­ma­tion about CycloTech and its tech­nol­o­gy, vis­it www.cyclotech.at