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Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

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Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#21

Post by baybal2 »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #13
baybal2 wrote: post #4

I protest, totally protest. Under no circumstances let people with dotcom webdev mentality run anything really serious in aeronautics. I myself had a rather similar talk to what that the panelist had with Kitty Hawk people with a very well moneyed, but also very naive CEO of a drone delivery startup. Some sarcasm added, but it went along these lines: Me: your best bet is to make a helicopter. Men much brighter than y…

What about Zipline? They seem to be doing drone delivery (of emergency blood supplies) in other countries and their approach to both safety and design seem admirable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnKnMgWy_tM

One of the few companies in that space being run by sane people

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#22

Post by mysterydip »

dmix wrote: post #18

When a VTOL vehicle switches directions of the blades in the air, is there any sort of drop in altitude as it moves into the forward direction? Or is it a gradual type of thing as it starts angling forward? I could see any drop before it kicks in being startling for customers, especially if the motors are less powerful than a helicopter or jet. I noticed the video makes a cut from flying to the landing part, without…

May not be exactly the same, but I don't believe there's an appreciable drop on a tiltrotor like the V-22.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#23

Post by lostdog »

mortenjorck wrote: post #19

When they led with “100x quieter than a helicopter,” my first reaction was a skeptical “well sure, decibels are logarithmic!” But 40dB from 600ft away is impressive, and within the range of what I would consider acceptable for residential flyover (though not takeoff and landing) in a medium-density area.

It is pretty quiet and very impressive. I wonder how many flyovers I would be ok with. 4 per hour sounds ok, but what if they route a highway above my house?

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#24

Post by heyflyguy »

Every time I see a multirotor carrying people, I think of the many times while building them at the beginning of the drone renaissance that I saw 4/6/8 bladed multirotors have an AP failure, a blade break, a speed controller overheat, etc etc and it fell out of the sky, literally.

These do not have a glideslope!

Sure, a ballistic chute might prevent an onboard tragedy but I continue to wonder about what the flying car gets parachuted onto. What fires get started? Who gets crushed?

Super cool tech. Huge accomplishment for the engineers involved.

I want to know how this makes a safe unpowered descent.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#25

Post by _8j50 »

heyflyguy wrote: post #24

Every time I see a multirotor carrying people, I think of the many times while building them at the beginning of the drone renaissance that I saw 4/6/8 bladed multirotors have an AP failure, a blade break, a speed controller overheat, etc etc and it fell out of the sky, literally. These do not have a glideslope! Sure, a ballistic chute might prevent an onboard tragedy but I continue to wonder about what the flying ca…

I don't know much about this aircraft but this appears to be a winged aircraft which unlike quadcopters and helicopters,losing an engine or rotor does not translate to a crash(?) because it had n number of rotors on each side,if one is lost,you lose altitude maybe and turn off matching rotors on the other side,which naively appears safer than a helicopter.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#26

Post by heyflyguy »

_8j50 wrote: post #25
heyflyguy wrote: post #24

Every time I see a multirotor carrying people, I think of the many times while building them at the beginning of the drone renaissance that I saw 4/6/8 bladed multirotors have an AP failure, a blade break, a speed controller overheat, etc etc and it fell out of the sky, literally. These do not have a glideslope! Sure, a ballistic chute might prevent an onboard tragedy but I continue to wonder about what the flying ca…

I don't know much about this aircraft but this appears to be a winged aircraft which unlike quadcopters and helicopters,losing an engine or rotor does not translate to a crash(?) because it had n number of rotors on each side,if one is lost,you lose altitude maybe and turn off matching rotors on the other side,which naively appears safer than a helicopter.

Could be, I hope so. I really want to ride in one if they are indeed safe. With all of those motors and props in the air, that's a whole bunch of parasitic drag if it is able to glide.

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#29

Post by _8j50 »

heyflyguy wrote: post #26
_8j50 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about this aircraft but this appears to be a winged aircraft which unlike quadcopters and helicopters,losing an engine or rotor does not translate to a crash(?) because it had n number of rotors on each side,if one is lost,you lose altitude maybe and turn off matching rotors on the other side,which naively appears safer than a helicopter.

Could be, I hope so. I really want to ride in one if they are indeed safe. With all of those motors and props in the air, that's a whole bunch of parasitic drag if it is able to glide.

For public transport or work commute,they don't need to fly that high. Maybe worst case they will be allowed at low altitude over water ways or low enough to where pre-emptive air-bag deployment would make it safe. In many ways hover craft is safer than cars I think,mostly because of the space available and lack of breaks (they say most car fatalities happen when people hit the break out of panic).

Re: Kitty Hawk reveals its secret project, Heaviside

#30

Post by lmetro »

[I've been an engineer working on this vehicle for the past 2 years.]

Hi HN! It's great to see lots of interest.

One big reason we went public with the project is to help with recruiting, as we're starting to scale up our hiring for lots of positions, including testing, manufacturing, and every sort of engineering that you can think of.

The team is super strong technically, and is full of people with interesting backgrounds, from former Tesla execs to competition wingsuit jumpers (Seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk1ChndsN8Y).

The whole "flying car" industry has a high hype-to-substance ratio, but I think we're the real deal. The jobs page is here: https://kittyhawk.aero/heaviside/

I'd love to talk technical details on here, but we're still keeping pretty quiet about specifics. All I can say is that our test video is real footage, and not a render ;).

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