Rotor Unveils R550X Autonomous Helicopter, Begins Production

Rotor Tech­nolo­gies, a devel­op­er of autonomous VTOL air­craft, has unveiled its R550X this week, the largest uncrewed civil­ian heli­copter on the mar­ket, reports a press release. The com­pa­ny will now begin pro­duc­tion.

The release states, “The R550X is an uncrewed heli­copter based on the Robin­son R44 Raven II. It is designed to lift heavy loads of up to 1,200 lbs, with no pilot onboard. With a flight time of over three hours and a top speed of 150 miles per hour, the R550X offers long-range VTOL capa­bil­i­ties beyond the reach of drones and eVTOLs, mak­ing it suit­able for demand­ing car­go, util­i­ty, and mar­itime oper­a­tions.”

This is an excit­ing devel­op­ment for the heli­copter indus­try and one which can com­pete with the grow­ing drone and e/VTOL mar­kets. Some sug­gest heli­copters will become redun­dant, start­ing in 6 years time, once the green avi­a­tion rev­o­lu­tion takes hold.

Poster foesfly3047, wrote in the YouTube com­ment sec­tion, “Yay, air­craft man­u­fac­tur­ers remain­ing finan­cial­ly sol­vent. I hope this new rev­enue stream enables Robin­son to pro­duce a rotor­craft, more afford­able than the R22, with the capa­bil­i­ty and good looks of an MD500.”

The R550X could com­pete with the per­son­al fly­ing vehi­cle mar­ket, in par­tic­u­lar, those com­pa­nies eye­ing up the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor like RYSE Tech­nolo­gies as well as the gen­er­al drone car­go indus­try.

The release con­tin­ues, “Sen­sors and dig­i­tal flight con­trol sys­tems enable the R550X to oper­ate safe­ly and autonomous­ly in a wide range of oper­at­ing envi­ron­ments – includ­ing at night and in lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty. Rotor’s soft­ware can pre­vent com­mon caus­es of heli­copter acci­dents such as inad­ver­tent entry into instru­ment mete­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions (I‑IMC), vor­tex ring state, mast bump­ing, loss-of-con­trol, and con­trolled flight into ter­rain (CFIT).”

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Hec­tor Xu, CEO of Rotor, com­ment­ed, “The R550X is going to bring huge safe­ty and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to a wide range of heli­copter use cas­es, demon­strat­ing the impact of auton­o­my in dan­ger­ous mis­sions like crop dust­ing and aer­i­al fire­fight­ing is the first step towards our vision for safe and acces­si­ble ver­ti­cal flight.”

While the autonomous heli­copter is an exper­i­men­tal-cat­e­go­ry uncrewed air­craft not designed to car­ry peo­ple, oper­a­tors can lever­age exist­ing FAA rules and reg­u­la­tions to fly the R550X in agri­cul­ture, fire­fight­ing, inspec­tion and mar­itime oper­a­tions. 

Pro­duc­tion of two R550Xs is now under­way at the company’s facil­i­ties in New Hamp­shire fol­low­ing Let­ters of Intent (LOIs) from agri­cul­tur­al air­craft oper­a­tors, who plan to use the heli­copter for crop dust­ing.

Ben Frank, CCO of Rotor, remarked, “We have a num­ber of agri­cul­tur­al cus­tomers who want to start oper­at­ing the R550X as soon as pos­si­ble, and this demand is dri­ving us to begin pro­duc­tion imme­di­ate­ly.” 

The first com­mer­cial oper­a­tions of the R550X are expect­ed to begin in the U.S next year, with inter­na­tion­al ones to fol­low.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://rotor.ai/

(Top image — Cred­it: Rotor)