In late 2019, after years of learning aviation and aerospace engineering, Hector (Haofeng) Xu determined to be taught to fly helicopters. At the time, he was pursuing his PhD in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, so he was acquainted with the dangers related with flying small plane. But one thing about being within the cockpit gave Xu a higher appreciation of these dangers. After a few nerve-wracking experiences, he was impressed to make helicopter flight safer.
In 2021, he based the autonomous helicopter firm Rotor Technologies, Inc.
It seems Xu’s near-misses weren’t all that distinctive. Although massive, industrial passenger planes are extraordinarily protected, folks die yearly in small, non-public plane within the U.S. Many of these fatalities happen throughout helicopter flights for actions like crop dusting, combating fires, and medical evacuations.
Rotor is retrofitting current helicopters with a set of sensors and software program to take away the pilot from a number of the most harmful flights and broaden use circumstances for aviation extra broadly.
“People don’t realize pilots are risking their lives every day in the U.S.,” Xu explains. “Pilots fly into wires, get disoriented in inclement weather, or otherwise lose control, and almost all of these accidents can be prevented with automation. We’re starting by targeting the most dangerous missions.”
Rotor’s autonomous machines are in a position to fly sooner and longer and carry heavier payloads than battery powered drones, and by working with a dependable helicopter mannequin that has been round for many years, the corporate has been in a position to commercialize rapidly. Rotor’s autonomous plane are already taking to the skies round its Nashua, New Hampshire, headquarters for demo flights, and prospects will have the ability to buy them later this yr.
“A lot of other companies are trying to build new vehicles with lots of new technologies around things like materials and power trains,” says Ben Frank ’14, Rotor’s chief industrial officer. “They’re trying to do everything. We’re really focused on autonomy. That’s what we specialize in and what we think will bring the biggest step-change to make vertical flight much safer and more accessible.”
Building a workforce at MIT
As an undergraduate at Cambridge University, Xu participated within the Cambridge-MIT Exchange Program (CME). His yr at MIT apparently went properly — after graduating Cambridge, he spent the subsequent eight years on the Institute, first as a PhD pupil, then a postdoc, and eventually as a analysis affiliate in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AeroAstro), a place he nonetheless holds at present. During the CME program and his postdoc, Xu was suggested by Professor Steven Barrett, who’s now the pinnacle of AeroAstro. Xu says Barrett has performed an necessary position in guiding him all through his profession.
“Rotor’s technology didn’t spin out of MIT’s labs, but MIT really shaped my vision for technology and the future of aviation,” Xu says.
Xu’s first rent was Rotor Chief Technology Officer Yiou He SM ’14, PhD ’20, whom Xu labored with throughout his PhD. The determination was an indication of issues to come back: The variety of MIT associates on the 50-person firm is now within the double digits.
“The core tech team early on was a bunch of MIT PhDs, and they’re some of the best engineers I’ve ever worked with,” Xu says. “They’re just really smart and during grad school they had built some really fantastic things at MIT. That’s probably the most critical factor to our success.”
To assist get Rotor off the bottom, Xu labored with the MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP), and the National Science Foundation’s New England Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program on campus.
A key early determination was to work with a widely known plane from the Robinson Helicopter Company somewhat than constructing an plane from scratch. Robinson already requires its helicopters to be overhauled after about 2,000 hours of flight time, and that’s when Rotor jumps in.
The core of Rotor’s resolution is what’s generally known as a “fly by wire” system — a set of computer systems and motors that work together with the helicopter’s flight management options. Rotor additionally equips the helicopters with a set of superior communication instruments and sensors, lots of which had been tailored from the autonomous automobile trade.
“We believe in a long-term future where there are no longer pilots in the cockpit, so we’re building for this remote pilot paradigm,” Xu says. “It means we have to build robust autonomous systems on board, but it also means that we need to build communication systems between the aircraft and the ground.”
Rotor is ready to leverage Robinson’s current provide chain, and potential prospects are snug with an plane they’ve labored with earlier than — even when nobody is sitting within the pilot seat. Once Rotor’s helicopters are within the air, the startup affords 24/7 monitoring of flights with a cloud-based human supervision system the corporate calls Cloudpilot. The firm is beginning with flights in distant areas to keep away from danger of human damage.
“We have a very careful approach to automation, but we also retain a highly skilled human expert in the loop,” Xu says. “We get the best of the autonomous systems, which are very reliable, and the best of humans, who are really great at decision-making and dealing with unexpected scenarios.”
Autonomous helicopters take off
Using small plane to do issues like struggle fires and ship cargo to offshore websites just isn’t solely harmful, it’s additionally inefficient. There are restrictions on how lengthy pilots can fly, they usually can’t fly throughout hostile climate or at night time.
Most autonomous choices at present are restricted by small batteries and restricted payload capacities. Rotor’s plane, named the R550X, can carry masses as much as 1,212 kilos, journey greater than 120 miles per hour, and be geared up with auxiliary gas tanks to remain within the air for hours at a time.
Some potential prospects are concerned about utilizing the plane to increase flying occasions and enhance security, however others need to use the machines for totally new sorts of purposes.
“It is a new aircraft that can do things that other aircraft couldn’t — or maybe even if technically they could, they wouldn’t do with a pilot,” Xu says. “You could also think of new scientific missions enabled by this. I hope to leave it to people’s imagination to figure out what they can do with this new tool.”
Rotor plans to promote a small handful of plane this yr and scale manufacturing to provide 50 to 100 plane a yr from there.
Meanwhile, within the for much longer time period, Xu hopes Rotor will play a task in getting him again into helicopters and, finally, transporting people.
“Today, our impact has a lot to do with safety, and we’re fixing some of the challenges that have stumped helicopter operators for decades,” Xu says. “But I think our biggest future impact will be changing our daily lives. I’m excited to be flying in safer, more autonomous, and more affordable vertical take-off and-landing aircraft, and I hope Rotor will be an important part of enabling that.”