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 Online retail giant Amazon hopes to offer delivery by drone in the
United States by the end of 2016.
Now a Dutch software engineer is working on a quadcopter that he
says will be able to deliver much more. Thorstin Crijns envisions a
quadcopter that can transport passengers autonomously, without
manual control.
"The main goal of this project is to create a system where passenger
can sit in and automatically go to his desired location without
manually driving it, so it should be done automatically. So imagine
that the passenger sits here, enter destination on a touch screen
and the drone will automatically take off and land there," Crijns
told Reuters.
"The biggest challenge is to make this entirely safe and entirely
autonomous," he added.
Crijns, based near Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands, has
built several small scale prototypes already. So far, he has managed
to keep a passenger in the air for a ten second flight.
He hopes his quadcopter, named Quadro, would function like a
conventional earth-bound taxi.
"What I envision is that government could use this transportation
system, and a person could use a smart phone, call the drone, get in
there and go to desired location," he explained.
The Quadro's twenty engines are powered by lithium battery and has
an aluminum alloy structure. Crijns used the MultiWii Autopilot
control system, a common choice for autonomous quadcopters, which he
says helps stabilize the vehicle.
Crijns is confident his passenger quadcopter will take to the air in
the future, although it may not be for some time.
"It's not only about technological challenges, but also about
awareness, people should trust this device, that's also really
important, and I think for all that to happen it will take 15 years
or something," he said.
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He has started negotiations with the Dutch government for a flight
permit, subject to fulfilling local safety requirements.
Crijns' quadcopter is not the only personal flight vehicles under
development. British-based Malloy Aeronautics has joined forces with
U.S. firm SURVICE to build a quadcopter Hoverbike, with funding from
the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Malloy vehicle has so far been built on a smaller scale to
demonstrate its advanced stability and maneuverability. It can be
controlled to fly autonomously on a pre-determined flight path,
return to home, loiter and follow the controller. It also features a
humanoid figure that can be attached to it, complete with mini-cam
mounted in its head.
The Hoverbike, showcased at the 2015 Paris Air show features unique
offset and overlapping rotor blades, designed to reduce weight and
platform area. It has guards around the rotor blades to minimize
rotor-strike.
The developers say the hoverbike's low cost and practical size lends
itself to operations such as search and rescue missions,
first-responder emergency services, and cargo insertion into
confined spaces.
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