Kaman Air Vehicles, a division of Kaman Aerospace Corporation, today announced the first flight of its new unmanned aircraft.
In general, the K-MAX is a heavy tractor in the sky.He began his “career” in 1994 as a logging helicopter capable of carrying 2722 kg of cargo on the end of the cable and the load hook. Its design feature is that instead of a tail rotor it has two large upper rotors. Each of them counteracts the torque of the other. The small cockpit accommodates one person and is designed for maximum automation, so the pilot can always keep his hands and feet on the control panel.
Crew requirements are minimal - one pilot,one mechanic. Moreover, with the installed Titan system from Kaman, you don’t even need a person to control the helicopter. Unmanned operations will keep pilots out of harm's way in difficult conditions - during firefighting, military missions or bad weather.
The Kaman system is already well tested - duringcombat operations completed more than a thousand unmanned missions. In the future, all K-MAXs will become fully autonomous with a self-piloting kit based on sensors from Near Earth Autonom. Testing on this platform is expected to begin in the next couple of months.
The Titan system will be available asmodifications for existing K-MAX choppers or as an option for new ones. Such machines will eventually be replaced by heavy, autonomous electric drones. But it will be a long time before the zero emission multicopter equals the K-MAX's 1,850 km range.
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