Robocraft is a “build, drive, fight” game where the players engage in online battles in order to gain Robot Points (RP) and Tech Points (TP) to further advance their robotic vehicles. With Tech Points, the player can unlock better armour blocks, hardware, and weapons from a tech tree, which they can then purchase with Robot Points. Parts can also be purchased with “Galaxy Cash”, an in-game currency that must be purchased for real money; some cosmetic items are only purchasable with Galaxy Cash.

The player is given the freedom to customize their vehicle or robot in any way they like, as long as it does not exceed their in-game CPU limit (obscene or offensive models are also banned under the terms and conditions). The player’s CPU limit increases as the player levels up, and it restricts the player from adding too many blocks to their vehicle. Robots are also placed into Tiers based on an arbitrary rating assigned to each part. There are ten Tiers, from T1 to T10,

The game features a part-based damage model, where the basic parts of the vehicles must be destroyed with weapons in order to achieve a kill over an opponent. The player’s team will win once all enemy vehicles are destroyed. Alternatively, players can capture the enemy’s base to win the game. There are several

Different WEAPON CLASSES

-Subatomic Machine Gun,
-Plasma Launcher,
-Rail Cannon,
-Nanotech Disruptor and
-Tesla Blades)
SEVERAL PROPULSION TYPES
-Thrusters,
-Wheels,
-Caterpillar Tracks,
-Hover Blades,
-Aerofoils,
-Rudders,
-Walker Legs, and
-Rotor Blades

While weapons cannot be mix-and-matched, propulsion systems can.

Resources

Game Link: http://robocraftgame.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocraft

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We would like to suggest that this is not the “Best Robot Movies of All Time”, but just a simple list that we made. Soon we are planning to make another list, which will include famous robots in cinema and TV. Because it would not be fair to exclude R2D2 and C3PO from Star Wars series, and Dalek from Dr. Who.

We would like to know about your favourite robot movies, please follow us on facebook and comment on this article.

So, let’s start with number 10

Bicentennial Man (1999)

10 - Bicentennial Man (1999)

This 1999 year made movie, is based on and named after one of the short stories written by Isaac Asimov, “Bicentennial Man”. Starring Robin Williams, this film is of course very amusing, yet touching.

In this movie, we see the life of a “man” trapped in a robots body, who seeks for an acceptence in the world of the mankind.

Real Steel (2011)

9 - Real Steel (2011)

This movie, is not just about technology, but also a great movie about friendship, family and love. CGI performance and characterisation of robots are both great. Our thoughts on this movie has changed after seeing it. I admit, i had some prejudgements, and this movie proved me wrong. Hugh Jackman performs very well, and Dakota Goyo, has done well as a child actor,

Robot boxing is very popular in the future. An ex-boxer is trying to struggle in this favourite sport with the help of his “junk” robot, while trying to bond with his son, whom he haasn’t seen in years.

Short Circuit (1986)

8 - Short Circuit (1986)

When i was a child, i felt very amazed after i first saw this movie. As a kid, it is not hard to be impressed, but this movie is more than a childs play. Director John Badham, known for “Saturday Night Fever” did a great job, and made us love robots.
A robot, known as “Number 5″, tries to escape from reproggramming, and gains self-awareness and consciousness.

Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)

7 - Artificial Intelligence (2001)

This Steven Spielberg film, is one of the milestones in robotics. It asks the question about what a human is, and what is the difference between mankind and robots.
It is a touching movie which you may either like it or hate it. Some say this is a boring film, while other insist that AI is a classic.
Still, if you like the philosophy behind the robot concept, this movie is just for you.

The post Our 10 Favourite Robot Movies of All Time appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

The post Sculptures Robots – A Creative Robot Design by “+BRAUER” appeared first on Robotpark ACADEMY.

Qualifiers Group B in the Fighting Robot Association 2013 UK Featherweight Championship hosted by RoboChallenge at Gadget Show Live in the Birmingham NEC.
Featherweight Robots have a weight limit of 13.6kg and must be built to the current FRA build rules.
Competition judged in accordance with FRA Competition Regulations.

Resources

More information visit www.fightingrobots.co.uk

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Sphero – 100% Summer Compatible Video

From the beach to the bonfire, Sphero is 100% summer compatible. As the world’s first app-controlled robotic ball, Sphero is ready for any adventure. Race Sphero down the boardwalk, battle against augmented reality zombies with friends, play handheld and multiplayer games around the campfire, compete in a game of TAG at the park, or take Sphero for a swim in the pool. This summer, take your gaming experience outside with Sphero. Video Link: http://youtu.be/C5q1iw5Oszg

Sphero – Ways To Play

Find out all of the great things you can do with Sphero! From driving to multiplayer games to swimming, Sphero does it all – and with 20 free apps there is something for everyone.

Comment By David Carnoy

Judging from the split reaction my colleagues had to Sphero 2.0 as I took it for a stroll around the office using my iPhone as a steering wheel, that love-it-or-leave-it sentiment remains the same — and so does the exterior design of the ball itself. But the new, second-generation Sphero, due to hit stores on 2013, is twice as fast and glows three times as brightly. Its software has also been upgraded, so it seems a bit more responsive.

The ball connects via Bluetooth and works with both iOS and Android devices. Standard Bluetooth has a range of 10 meters (33 feet) but the Sphero 2.0’s range is 30 meters, which gives you some room to drive it around. It’s easy to set up and get going, though it takes a lot of practice to become a truly adept Sphero driver who’s able negotiate Formula-1-style indoor circuits.

Because it’s hard to control at first, the Sphero 2.0 doesn’t reach its new top speed out of the box. You actually have to level up to top speed by driving it around for a few hours, gaining experience and your Sphero driver’s license so to speak.

The Sphero is completely waterproof and more durable than it looks. It also makes an endearing little chirping sound that gives it a bit of personality, and you can change its color. As for battery life, it gets about an hour of drive time before you have to charge it using the included induction charger and stand (it takes about 3 hours to fully charge).

The Sphero moves along at a good clip. With the increased speed, when you open up the throttle it becomes very difficult to control in tighter spaces. However, if it gets stuck somewhere, the power boost does help you get the ball out of jams.

The novelty of driving the Sphero around does wear off somewhat quickly, which is why Orbotix has included a set of ramps in the box (they’re actually integrated into the packaging, which is pretty ingenious) to pull off miniature Evel Knievel-style jumps.

Orbotix has also developed a variety of free apps to challenge your driving skills and allow you to use the Sphero in various games, including some multiplayer and augmented-reality games. A growing number of third-party apps are also available (some of those aren’t free) and some apps have you hold the Sphero in your hand to control something on your phone or tablet screen.

It’s worth noting that the Sphero does swim, by which I mean it floats. However, to make it move better in water, you need to buy an optional accessory called a Nubby cover that’s a silicone rubber case with bumps on it that provides traction in fluids and on off-road terrain. That cover comes in a few different colors.

As I said in my initial musings on the first Sphero, it’s something of a technological feat to remotely put a ball in motion, and the software upgrade and performance boost make the user experience a little more thrilling. But ultimately, you’ll either look at Sphero in action and think, “Wow, that’s cool,” or you’ll just see a ball rolling around and wonder what all the fuss is about.

As noted, the Sphero 2.0 ships on 2013. The Sphero 2.0 Revealed, a special version for Apple Stores, arrives on September 4.

Links:

http://reviews.cnet.com/robots-and-robot-kits/sphero-2/4505-3510_7-35826410.html

http://www.gosphero.com/

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The machine watches itself while painting and decides indepentently where to add new strokes. This way paintings are created that are not completely defined by the programmer but are the result of a visual optimization process. (informatik.uni-konstanz.de/en/edavid/news/)

Paintings of e-David Robot

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Scientific Motivation of e-David

Our hypothesis is that painting – at least the technical part of painting – can be seen as optimization processes in which color is manually distributed on a canvas until the painter is able to recognize the content – regardless if it is a representational painting or not. Optimization happens intuitively during the drawing process and is highly dependent on the medium and its restrictions. Centuries of so-called academic art have been shown to what extent algorithms for spatial division as well as color and content composition can be used for creating art works.

On the other side computer graphics, and especially in so-called non-photorealistic rendering made a lot of progress in imitating painting styles using the computer. By simulating media and stroke composition a lot of painting-like images were produced, typically by computing pixel information that later was printed on a conventional printer. E-David will substitute this by distributing real color on real canvas and thus will enable us to enclose the whole process of drawing production into an optimization framework. This will allow us to investigate human “optimization schemes” and to find out to what extent such schemes can be formulated using algorithms. We will use iterated optimization schemes to produce color distributions on the canvas which are constrained by given styles. Semantic information can be integrated to optimize representational paintings; a tree will be painted in a different way than a face even if the colors are similar. Such semantic information can be obtained from semantic image analysis of the given target image. A number of other questions arise immediately:

When you watch an artist paint, individual brush strokes can seem random. It’s often not until close to the very end that the image the painter is after becomes clear. This is doubly true when you watch e-David, the robot painter, at work. David, which stands for “Drawing Apparatus for Vivid Image Display,” was created by a team of engineers at the University of Konstanz in Germany.

He’s a former welding robot who has been retrofitted to reproduce, brush stroke by brush stroke, existing works of art. The robotic arm has access to five different brushes and 25 colors of paint, and after each dab of paint, it takes a photograph of what it has painted so far- computer software analyzes the photograph and tells David where to place the next brush stroke. The strangeness of the process is especially evident when David signs his name at the end.

As you can see in this video, he begins by making the dot over the “i” and then writes the rest of his name backwards- hardly how you or I would do it, and a clear reminder that- once someone else has given you the idea- there’s more than one way to make the Mona Lisa.

Resources:

Video Link Vimeo – http://vimeo.com/68859229

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2013/08/paint-by-robot.html

http://www.informatik.uni-konstanz.de/en/edavid/

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DUBLIN

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial) has announced the addition of the “Industrial Robotics Market in China 2012-2016″ report to their offering.

One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need for increased productivity in the manufacturing process. The Industrial Robotics market in China has also been witnessing the emergence of next-generation industrial robots. However, the continuous decline in vendors’ profit margin could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.

The key vendors dominating this space include ABB Ltd., Denso Wave Inc., Fanuc Corp., KUKA AG, Seiko Epson Corp., Toshiba Machine Co. Ltd., and Yaskawa Electric Corp.

The other vendors mentioned in this report are iRobot Corp., Kawasaki Robotics Inc., Omron Corp., RoboGroup TEK Ltd., Rockwell Automation Inc., Siasun Robot & Automation Co. Ltd., ST Robotics, STAUBLI Corp., Yamaha Robotics, and Mitsubishi Electric Automation Inc.

Commenting on the report, an analyst from the team said: One of the main trends witnessed in the Industrial Robotics market in China is the need for multipurpose robotic systems. Various end-users are looking for robotic systems that can perform numerous tasks efficiently. The multipurpose robots should be able to perform several functions such as assembly, dispensing, machine tending, material handling, material removing, and packaging. End-users are also investing in industrial robots that can perform inspection activities such as error proofing during the assembly process. The use of multipurpose robots will in turn reduce the total cost of ownership and enhance the productivity of manufacturers.

According to the report, one of the main factors driving the market is the need to reduce total cost of ownership. Robots help manufacturing companies develop and manufacture accurate and reliable products without defects. They also help companies reduce product failure costs and product wastage.

For more information visit: http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

About Research and Markets

Research and Markets is the world’s leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Links:

http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2013/08/15/2892291/research-and-markets-the-industrial.html

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/lk6rvx/industrial

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They may not yet have reached the startlingly lifelike capabilities of Sonny, the soft-spoken android in the movie I, Robot, but they’re getting closer.

This week it has been reported that robots are moving ever nearer to acquiring human abilities – to smell, feel and see their surroundings, allowing them to operate more independently and perform some of the messy, and dangerous, jobs that people don’t want to do.

Machines are being created that can “smell” gas leaks, carry out underwater surveillance, and sort packages by shape and colour – and advances in sensor technology enable them to make decisions without human beings overseeing them.

On Friday, Kirobo, the world’s first talking humanoid space robot, is due to arrive at the International Space Station, where it will patiently await the arrival of the next astronaut there, Koichi Wakata from Japan. It has been programmed to recognise his face – and greet him warmly in his native tongue.

What is the future for robots ?

and could they, as they did in the Will Smith film, try to take over the world?

Three senior figures at Cambridge University have been exploring that topic this week in an online question-and-answer session for the university’s Department of Engineering: Lord Martin Rees, Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics; Kathleen Richardson, who did her PhD at Cambridge and is writing a book about robots as potential friends or enemies; and Daniel Wolpert, from the Department of Engineering, an expert in bioengineering.

In answer to the question, what can robots do for us? Lord Rees said: “Robots have two very different roles.

-The first is to operate in locations that humans can’t reach, such as the aftermaths of accidents in mines, oil rigs and nuclear power stations.

-The second, also deeply unglamorous, is to help elderly or disabled people with everyday life: tying shoelaces, cutting toenails and suchlike.

Moreover, if robots can be miniaturised, they can perhaps be used inside our bodies for monitoring our health, undertaking surgery, and so forth.”

Prof Wolpert said: “While computers can now beat grandmasters at chess, there is currently no robot that can match the dexterity of a five-year-old child. The field of robotics is similar to where computers were in the 1960s – expensive machines used in simple, repetitive industrial processes. But modern day robotics is changing that. Robots are likely to become as ubiquitous as the smartphone computers we all carry – from microscopic robotics for healthcare and fabrication to human-size robots to take on our everyday tasks or even act as companions.”

How soon will machine intelligence outstrip human intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Up till now, the advances have been patchy. For at least the last 30 years, we’ve been able to buy for a few pounds a machine that can do arithmetic faster than our brains can. Back in the 1990s IBM’s ‘Deep Blue’ beat Kasparov, the world chess champion. But robots are still limited in their ability to sense their environment: they can’t yet recognise and move the pieces on a real chessboard as cleverly as a child can.

“Later this century, however, their more advanced successors may relate to their surroundings (and to people) as adeptly as we do. Moral questions then arise. We accept an obligation to ensure that other human beings, and indeed some animal species, can fulfil their ‘natural’ potential. So what’s our obligation towards sophisticated robots? Should we feel guilty about exploiting them? Should we fret if they are underemployed, frustrated, or bored?”

Dr Richardson said: “The human fear of robots and machines arguably has much more to say about human fear of each other rather than anything inherently technical in the machines. However, one of the consequences of thinking that the problem lies with machines is that as a culture we tend to imagine they are greater and more powerful than they really are – and subsequently they become so.”

Should we be scared by advances in artificial intelligence?

Lord Rees said: “Those who should be worried are the futurologists who believe in the so-called ‘singularity’, when robots take over and themselves create even more sophisticated progeny. And another worry is that we are increasingly dependent on computer networks, and that these could behave like a single ‘brain’ with a mind of its own, and with goals that may be contrary to human welfare. I think we should ensure that robots remain as no more than ‘idiot savants’ – lacking the capacity to outwit us, even though they may greatly surpass us in the ability to calculate and process information.”

Should robots be used to colonise other planets?

Lord Rees believes that by the end of the century, the entire solar system – planets, moons and asteroids – will be explored and mapped by “flotillas of tiny robotic craft.”

He said: “The next step would be mining of asteroids, enabling fabrication of large structures in space without having to bring all the raw materials from Earth. It would be possible to develop huge artefacts: giant telescopes with gossamer-thin mirrors assembled under zero gravity, collectors of solar energy, and so forth. I think this is more realistic and benign than the so-called ‘terraforming’ of planets.”

Prof Wolpert added: “I don’t see a pressing need to colonise other planets unless we can bring resources back to Earth. The vast majority of Earth is currently inaccessible to us. Using robots to gather resources nearer to home would seem to be a better use of our robotic tools.”

Resource Links:
More about the Cambridge experts’ views on robots can be found on the engineering department’s website, at

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/news/stories/2013/robot_world/

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/News/Could-robots-every-take-over-the-world-20130807060000.htm

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They can “smell” gas leaks, conduct underwater surveillance and even sort boxes by shape and colour and toss them into the appropriate warehouse bin. Advances in sensor technology and software allow these machines to make split-second decisions without human masters overseeing them about how to follow a scent trail or where to go to next.

“They are gaining human capabilities, whether it’s smell, or touch or recognising our voices,”

said Daniel H. Wilson, a PhD in robotics and the author of Robopocalypse, a techno-thriller about what happens when robots go wrong. “If they are going to solve human problems, they will have to have human abilities. Those are things that robots will have to understand if they play a role in our lives.”

Until now, robots have had to navigate with small infrared sensors that keep them from bumping into things. Some have relied on video cameras that send images to human operators. But a new generation of robots is gaining the ability to understand voices, see objects with the same depth perception as humans and use grasping arms that have dexterity close to that of humans.

Of course, none of them is yet as lifelike as “Sonny,” the android of Isaac Asimov’s novel (and the subsequent movie) “I, Robot,” who feels, can think for himself, move on his own and, in a limited way, emotes. Most robots with advanced sensing abilities are still in the experimental stage. More than toys but not yet tools, they work well in the laboratory but can’t yet handle real-world situations.

Take, for example, the robots that are sorting boxes, picking them up and tossing them into the right bin. This robot uses two-dimensional and three-dimensional video cameras and software to “look” at the size and shape of the box and then decide where it should go.

The robot works pretty well — as long as the boxes are pretty much rectangular and aren’t moving, says Stanford University computer science professor Gary Bradski, co-founder of Industrial Perception, the start-up that invented the robot. But it isn’t quite ready to replace human workers in the mailroom or on the factory floor.

“It’s easy to get 80 or 90 percent of the way there,” he said. ” But it’s getting the speed and reliability to make it economic. You can’t fail very often; otherwise, you’re not saving any labour.”

Getting robots to smell is one of the bigger challenges. A recent project out of the University of Tokyo takes a step in that direction. Scientists there recently unveiled a tiny robot that is driven by a male silkworm moth responding to a female moth’s seductive pheromone aroma.

The researchers built a motorised wheeled car that moves when a moth, spurred by the smell, launches into a mating dance of repeated zigzags on top of a trackball, similar to the ones used inside a computer mouse. As the moth does its dance, sensors transmit its motions to the robot’s motors, allowing it to follow the path chosen by the male.

The researchers said the “odour-tracking behaviours of animals” could eventually be “applied to other autonomous robots so they can track down smells, and subsequent sources, of environmental spills and leaks when fitted with highly sensitive sensors.”

Noriyasu Ando, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, who worked on the moth robot, said in an e-mail that the challenge was to develop a robot that could “behave alone, free from external wired connections because the silk moth turns quickly and rotates very often.”

Ando said the ultimate goal is to develop a robot with its own smelling capabilities, one that can follow a trail just like the moth on the trackball.

The team is now trying to build an artificial brain they’ve named Kei; the motor-moth using its sense of smell is one step toward that goal, he said.

Achim Lilienthal, who directs the mobile robotics and olfaction lab at Orebro University in Sweden, said smell is more complicated for robots than vision. Cameras can see an object as long as there is enough light, while odours exist as plumes and patches in the air and are not consistent in strength, which makes finding the source difficult.

Lilienthal gives the example of methane emanating from an old landfill. The town managing the landfill had set up devices to capture the gas produced by the landfill’s decay and burn it to heat the local hospital. But over time, as the plastic lining beneath the landfill developed cracks, more than half of the methane was evading the capture technology. The town hired someone to walk around the landfill and sniff for leaks, but that didn’t work very well because the human nose is not very efficient.

Enter Lilienthal’s “gasbot,”which looks like a lawnmower with a big metal eyeball perched on top of a metal pole. This mini all-terrain vehicle picks up smells using two laser beams: One absorbs the chemical signature of the methane and determines its concentration in the air. The second helps provide a three-dimensional map of the gas plume. The advantage of the gasbot is that the lasers detect the gas remotely, without machine or human having direct contact with the plume.

“For most gas sensors [such as smoke detectors], you need to [physically] encounter the smell,” whereas the gasbot uses its lasers to detect gas at a distance, Lilienthal said.

Scientists are working as well to create effective underwater robots. This task is very challenging because there is often not enough light for cameras to work well, while swirling currents and eddies play havoc with smells and chemical plumes.

To deal with this, a European group has built a robot that uses something called lateral line sensing. The lateral line is a series of nerve cells in fish that runs from just below the head to the tail and allows them to sense the speed and direction of currents, helping them catch food and swim in schools without bumping into each other.

More than 30,000 fish species use lateral line sensing, according to Maarja Kruusmaa, professor of biorobotics at the Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. She and colleagues set out to create an electronic equivalent that would allow underwater robots to navigate more efficiently through currents. After four years of work they came up with FILOSE (Robotic FIsh LOcomotion and SEnsing), a robot that’s shaped like a rainbow trout. The researchers developed tiny sensors to monitor pressure differences in the water flowing around the robot. This allows the robot to follow in the wake of an object to cut energy use, according to Kruusmaa.

“It is similar to reducing your effort in the tailwind of another cyclist or reducing the fuel consumption of your car by driving behind a truck,” she said.

The robot is driven by a small electric motor and can be outfitted with a video camera for surveillance or with chemical sensors to detect pollution. The next step is to take FILOSE for a swim outside the lab to see how it does in the real world.

Meanwhile, Kanna Rajan, principal researcher for autonomy at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, is designing underwater robots that are programmed to make their own decisions.

They use sensors to determine where to hunt for oil spills, for example, or to swim toward a place in the ocean that scientists want to study, such as a feeding ground for fish or a range of underwater volcanoes that might erupt.

Rajan, a former Nasa researcher who helped develop the rovers that landed on Mars almost 10 years ago, says it’s harder to build smart robots that work underwater than ones that function in outer space.

That’s because communications for the latter travel through the relatively quiet vacuum of space. Underwater communications, however, are often blocked by layers of warm and cold water, slow-moving underwater storms and the sounds of passing ships and wildlife.

The ocean’s salinity also tends to degrade robots much more than the cold temperatures of space, Rajan said.

“The ocean is a lot more harsh,” he said. “If you go in deep space, there’s not much going on, you are very careful as to what you do. Even on Mars you can talk to your robot.”

So what are the prospects for a seeing, smelling, sensing robot that works in the real world? That probably won’t materialise anytime soon, said Jelle Atema, a professor of biology at Boston University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

“When it comes to a broad, robust exposure in the natural environment and still being able to perform the task,” Atema said, “animals have it all over human engineering.”

-Washington Post

Resource Links:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/gadgets/9013693/Robots-Not-human-but-getting-closer

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Together, the innovators invented and built the volocopter in a process that took over 2 years.  e-volo is the winner of the 2012 Lindbergh Prize for Innovation

Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, announced the 2012 winner of the Lindbergh Prize. The Lindbergh Foundation’s aviation prizes are designed to recognize and stimulate innovation, and promote meaningful advancements in green aviation.

“We believe that the development of the Volocopter holds significant promise to radically change short distance transportation,” said Erik Lindbergh. “It has a long development path ahead, but if this innovative design reaches the commercial market it will dramatically change the way we move about the planet.”

What is a Volocopter?

The Volocopter by e-volo is a completely novel, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) manned aircraft, which cannot be classified in any known category. The fact that it was conceived of as a purely electrically powered aircraft sets it apart from conventional aircraft.

Through the use of its many propellers, the Volocopter can take off and land vertically like a helicopter. A considerable advantage, apart from the simple construction without complex mechanics, is the redundancy of drives. This enables the safe landing of the volocopter even if some drives fail.

How Does the Volocopter Work?

The controls work according to the fly-by-wire principle very easily by means of a joystick. As opposed to any other aircraft, the operation is child’s play. It takes off and lands vertically and the pilot pays little or no attention to the flight path angle, minimum speed, stall, mixture control, pitch adjustment and many other things which make conventional aviation so demanding.

The propellers generate the entire ascending force, and by means of a selective change in rotary speed they simultaneously take care of the steering. Furthermore, as opposed to helicopters, no mechanical pitch control of the propellers is necessary whatsoever.

The automatic position control and the directional control take place by means of several independent and mutually monitoring airborne computers which control the rotation speed of each drive separately.

An optional, additional pusher propeller enables an even faster flight.

How Does the Volocopter Work?

The controls work according to the fly-by-wire principle very easily by means of a joystick. As opposed to any other aircraft, the operation is child’s play. It takes off and lands vertically and the pilot pays little or no attention to the flight path angle, minimum speed, stall, mixture control, pitch adjustment and many other things which make conventional aviation so demanding.

The propellers generate the entire ascending force, and by means of a selective change in rotary speed they simultaneously take care of the steering. Furthermore, as opposed to helicopters, no mechanical pitch control of the propellers is necessary whatsoever.

The automatic position control and the directional control take place by means of several independent and mutually monitoring airborne computers which control the rotation speed of each drive separately.

How Long Can The Volocopter Fly?

Currently, the limiting factor is the energy capacity of available batteries. However, a considerable advancement in battery technology is conceivable during the next few years, so that a multiplication of the energy capacity will occur within a short period of time. At present a battery flight time of 20 minutes is possible, but in the near future this will be extended to one hour or more.

To enable a flight time of several hours right from the start, our two-seater Volocopter is being developed as a serial hybrid electrical aircraft with a range extender.

A range extender is an additional aggregate in an electrical vehicle which extends the range of the vehicle considerably. The most commonly used range extenders are combustion motors which power a generator that supplies the batteries and electrical engines with electricity. Range extenders run at a constant rotation speed with optimal efficiency.

Concept Video VC007 (E-Volo)

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