CycloTech and Yamato reveal innovative cargo eVTOL concept with CycloRotors and complete feasibility study

CycloTech and Yam­a­to Hold­ings have suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed a joint fea­si­bil­i­ty study on apply­ing CycloRo­tors, a new thrust vec­tor­ing propul­sion tech­nol­o­gy, to cre­ate a mid-class car­go eVTOL air­craft capa­ble of pre­ci­sion land­ing in con­fined areas, with the abil­i­ty to han­dle chal­leng­ing wind con­di­tions — key fea­tures for urban air­borne logis­tic oper­a­tions. 

They have pub­lished a white paper explain­ing the detailed out­come of a study that incor­po­rat­ed the PUPA701 Pod Unit for Par­cel Air-trans­porta­tion devel­oped by Yam­a­to, and the CycloRo­tors 360° thrust vec­tor­ing avi­a­tion propul­sion sys­tem devel­oped by CycloTech.

PUPA701 enables a sep­a­rate load­ing and unload­ing sequence from the aircraft’s process cycle to secure fast ground han­dling and effi­cient car­go logis­tics. 

Yam­a­to has con­duct­ed R&D on a car­go eVTOL sys­tem while CycloRo­tors are based on the same prin­ci­ple as the Voith Schnei­der Pro­peller for agile and sta­ble ships in the mar­itime indus­try. 

The com­pact design and direct con­trol of mag­ni­tude thrust direc­tion offer a sta­ble tran­si­tion from hov­er to for­ward flight and supe­ri­or manoeu­vra­bil­i­ty. 

CycloRo­tors were used to design an unmanned car­go eVTOL that is sta­ble in windy con­di­tions, with pre­ci­sion land­ing in con­fined areas of 5 m diam­e­ter, capa­ble of trans­port­ing a 45 kg pay­load over a dis­tance of 40 km.

A bat­tery-pow­ered, dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem with six omni-direc­tion­al thrust gen­er­at­ing CycloRo­tors ensures sta­bil­i­ty in cross­winds of up to 18 m/s, in a com­pact 2.7 m x 2.5 m foot­print.

The design is based on exten­sive cal­cu­la­tions, wind tun­nel test­ing, and the first flights of a tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor. 

All oper­a­tions can be han­dled from one side, be it load­ing and unload­ing the pay­load, com­plete swap of the pod or charg­ing or exchang­ing bat­ter­ies. It ensures flex­i­ble, fast, safe and ergonom­ic han­dling, min­imis­ing haz­ards to the oper­a­tor or the vehi­cle.

Yam­a­to will pur­sue high val­ue air­borne logis­tics oper­a­tions with the tech­ni­cal premis­es expand­ed by this study, while CycloTech will con­tin­ue cre­at­ing inno­v­a­tive, cus­tomised solu­tions with CycloRo­tor tech­nol­o­gy. 

Last Octo­ber, after nine months of test­ing, CycloTech screened a video of the first free-flight of its tech­nol­o­gy demon­stra­tor at the DroneX Trade Show & Con­fer­ence at the ExCeL Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre, which includ­ed a keynote pre­sen­ta­tion from CycloTech’s CEO, Hans-Georg Kin­sky.

Yam­a­to Hold­ings joined the Ver­ti­cal Flight Soci­ety last year, mak­ing a total of 160 com­pa­nies as cor­po­rate mem­bers.