The Swedish company Jetson presented a manned multicopter capable of accelerating up to 102 kilometers per hour. The drone has lidars to help avoid collisions, a parachute, and the power of the engines allows it to continue flying in the event of a breakdown of one of them.
The company intends to start small-scale production in 2022 and sell the vehicle for $92,000. Among common drones, there is a large class of FPV racing drones that allow you to fly at high speed and perform impressive stunts.
Most of them are self-assembled by enthusiasts, but serial devices have already begun to appear, including those from well-known drone manufacturers.
With multicopters that transport people, the situation is different. There are already many models designed for flights of one or several people, but almost always these are air taxis flying on autopilot to a given point.
Projects of manned drones are still either single prototypes from amateur engineers, or projects from companies that still fly without people. Also in 2018, Kitty Hawk introduced a single-seat manned drone, but it was going to sell it only to legal entities, and two years later the company closed the project.
Now Jetson has unveiled the Jetson ONE single-seat racing drone, which can be purchased by anyone, and demonstrated its tests.
The drone is designed as a cockpit with four arms. At the end of each arm, there are 2 electric motors with large open screws. The drone weighs 86 kilograms, and the maximum pilot weight is 95 kilograms.
The drone is manually operated using a joystick and a thrust lever. At the same time, it also has a terrain and obstacle tracking system, which scans the area around with the help of lidars.
In addition, the drone has other security methods: triple redundancy of the on-board computer and the ability to fly without one propeller, as well as an emergency ballistic parachute that is automatically thrown out in the event of an uncontrolled fall.
The manufacturer claims that the drone is capable of accelerating to 102 kilometers per hour, and this is a software limitation, but technically its capabilities are higher. The Jetson ONE can fly for 20 minutes on a single charge. The cost of the drone is 92,000 dollars. The company plans to deliver the first 12 devices in 2022.
Source: https://www.jetsonaero.com/