Q&A: CycloTech CEO gives update on its progress towards first test flights with technology demonstrator

Propul­sion devel­op­er CycloTech con­tin­ues to work on its tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor, which cur­rent­ly has a take-off weight of 85kg and mea­sures 2.5 metres in length and about 2 metres wide.

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

We caught up with CEO Hans-Georg Kin­sky for an update on how progress is going since our last con­ver­sa­tion in Sep­tem­ber 2020 and what work they have in store for lat­er this year and into 2022.

Q: It’s been a few months since we last spoke, Hans. What has CycloTech been up to dur­ing that time?

Hans-Georg Kin­sky: “When we last spoke, we had orig­i­nal­ly planned to get our flight test start­ed by the end of 2020 but there are two rea­sons why we still have a delay: We under­es­ti­mat­ed the com­plex­i­ty and neces­si­ty of intense test­ing for flight con­trol sys­tems and all the flight test prepa­ra­tions. In com­bi­na­tion with hard­ware in the loop tests and the sur­round­ing safe­ty con­cepts you need.

“We’ve had a lot of con­tact with peo­ple work­ing at many UAV and UAM com­pa­nies, includ­ing Air­bus and Volo­copter, who have main­ly said to make sure every­thing is safe and that you’re not risk­ing any­thing. We cur­rent­ly only have one demon­stra­tor so if we fail to take off in a secure envi­ron­ment then that would be the worst case sce­nario.

“The demon­stra­tor is now ful­ly assem­bled and at the begin­ning of this year, we start­ed all the sys­tems tests and have fin­ished test­ing all sin­gle rotors as well as the bat­tery sys­tem and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem. We have six rotor units alto­geth­er and all of them have been test­ed, ver­i­fied and tried on the demon­stra­tor. It looks much or less as it should be, but we’re a bit above the expect­ed max­i­mum take-off weight (MTOW) so we have a few weight-sav­ing ini­tia­tives that we need to do with lighter mate­ri­als to get more per­for­mance from the sys­tem.”

Q: And what are your plans for the rest of the year?

HK: “We have two main projects. One is the demon­stra­tor, which is from our view just pure­ly for the tech­nol­o­gy proof. We still see a lot of effi­cien­cy poten­tial for the future. 

Final­ly in the sec­ond half of June, there should be the flight tests start­ing. The next cou­ple of days will be used to get the final sta­tion­ary tests done on the sta­t­ic test bench, which will take about a fort­night, and then we’ll go into indoor free flight until the end of the month.

“We’re already start­ed to have flight con­trol meet­ings with Prof. Holzapfel from the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich and Prof Myschik from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Mil­i­tary in Munich who are cor­po­ra­tion part­ners for the devel­op­ment of the flight con­trol sys­tem. From their side, every­thing should be test­ed and ready for take-off, so we’ll start with the back up con­troller which is a sim­ple ver­sion of the con­trol sys­tem, just to have a direct access for the first flight tri­als.

“The sec­ond is the pri­ma­ry con­troller which then allows com­plete con­trol of the demon­stra­tor. The next step after this would be going out­doors for out­door flights. We’re work­ing with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Applied Sci­ense Joan­neum ind Graz for exper­i­men­tal cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and hope­ful­ly by the end of July, should be fly­ing with the pri­ma­ry con­trol sys­tem and in August or begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber, start with out­door flight tri­als. It sounds easy, but you need a lot of prepa­ra­tion.”

Q: Since we last spoke about CycloTech’s work and the tech­nol­o­gy behind it, what has feed­back been like?

HK: “We’ve had a lot of emails and calls for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and coop­er­a­tion and talk­ing to about three or four projects which are from dif­fer­ent fields. The band­width is quite broad, so we need to fig­ure out which will be the best one to suc­cess­ful­ly bring our tech­nol­o­gy to mar­ket. But the over­all response was tremen­dous, from all over Aus­tria but also as far as the USA, Japan and Chi­na.”

Q: “We spoke pre­vi­ous­ly about two UAV appli­ca­tions that CycloTech was going to work on. Do you have any updates on devel­op­ments?

HK: “Yes, this is the sec­ond big project we are work­ing on this year. The first is the tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor and mak­ing sure that is all proved, and we’ll have a sec­ond demon­stra­tor to pro­vide addi­tion­al manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty which will be ready by Autumn. So we’ll have two fly­ing which gives us extra secu­ri­ty in case some­thing hap­pens.

And what we’ve also been fig­ur­ing out over the last cou­ple of months is defin­ing our go-to mar­ket strat­e­gy. Last time, we had some ideas that it might be as a high agili­ty drone but we’ll be enter­ing our CycloRo­tors as an aux­il­iary sys­tem to secure the trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the indus­try.

We need appli­ca­tions that show the endurance and capa­bil­i­ties of the tech­nol­o­gy. We’d like to start off first with a UAV appli­ca­tion, which is a high agili­ty drone con­cept with our rotors as a con­trolled sta­bil­i­sa­tion sys­tem for high pre­ci­sion mobil­i­ty in rough con­di­tions.

“So in windy sit­u­a­tions where you need to inspect some­thing, we are able to pro­vide the direct con­trol to counter act on every force that has forced the air­craft out of posi­tion. So we’re in the final stage of eval­u­a­tions inter­nal­ly, but the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less and we need to fig­ure out where we can add the most val­ue.

“Our tech­nol­o­gy adds weight and cost to an air­craft, which is cru­cial, so we real­ly need to show a good addi­tion­al ben­e­fit to the sys­tem and to add it to an exist­ing con­cept. I think we will soon be able to pub­lish the first coop­er­a­tion agree­ment and the first favourable inter­nal con­cept or next aux­il­iary sys­tem.”

Q: And for those who per­haps don’t know about your tech­nol­o­gy. Can you tell them more about it?

HK: “The main ben­e­fit of our sys­tem is that we can prove its addi­tion­al con­trol­la­bil­i­ty, because we have direct and imme­di­ate coun­ter­ac­tion against any force attach­ing to an air­craft. It does­n’t mat­ter whether it’s an air taxi or drone, when­ev­er you need to com­pen­sate for any cross­wind, you need to bank and coun­ter­act all of these.

“First of all, there is a time-lack­ing prob­lem because you need to react to the bank­ing and get your air­craft back into posi­tion. With our sys­tem, pend­ing on the con­fig­u­ra­tion, you can imme­di­ate­ly build up a force exact­ly in the direc­tion where you’d like to have it. So you don’t have to change the flight atti­tude.

“This is the main ben­e­fit. If you have a look at crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture inspec­tion on wind­mills, oil plat­forms or even pow­er lines and rail­roads; if it is windy or rainy you still need to inspect it. It’s the same for logis­tics com­pa­nies with parcels, they can’t tell their cus­tomers that they can­not deliv­er your par­cel because of the weath­er out­side because they are not able to get their VTOL drone in the right posi­tion.

“That’s one of the main top­ics in our dis­cus­sions. First step is always to get the things fly­ing and show they have the capa­bil­i­ty of the tech­nol­o­gy, and the sec­ond is to go into cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. For reg­u­la­tions with unmanned aer­i­al vehi­cles you need to show the abil­i­ty to be able to posi­tion the air­craft, espe­cial­ly in the crit­i­cal phase of the ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing. But we’re con­vinced they need addi­tion­al sys­tems to be able to have a sta­ble and con­trol­lable start­ing and land­ing phase. And we will have the per­fect solu­tion for them.”

Q: Are you still work­ing towards a planned launch date for the tech­nol­o­gy in 2024?

HK: “Yes, that’s still the plan. The ide­al part­ner would be a com­pa­ny com­ing out of the UAV indus­try which has a cer­tain prod­uct port­fo­lio but for spe­cif­ic mis­sions, would need more pre­cise posi­tion­ing that they can’t cur­rent­ly ful­fil with their cur­rent port­fo­lio.

“So the ide­al wish list would be to rede­vel­op and cus­tomise the rotor sys­tems, and have two inter­nal projects run­ning to opti­mise this process to be able to quick­ly and accu­rate­ly answer how large our sys­tem would be and what the con­fig­u­ra­tion for the com­plete air­craft would look like with the pow­er demand.”