VTOL UAS to Soar on Hydrogen Power
S. Himmelstein | June 05, 2017An unmanned aerial system (UAS) under development by Wirth Research (Oxfordshire, UK) for long-endurance missions will have vertical take off and landing (VTOL) capability. The advanced terrain mapping drone can carry diverse payloads, making it of value in applications such as precision agriculture, pipeline and cable inspection for utilities, surveillance and other security-related tasks, in addition to detection and monitoring support for ordnance clearance operations.
The VTOL long-endurance UAS. (Source: Wirth Research)An advanced hydrogen fuel cell storage, control, and power system for the zero-emissions craft will be provided by HES of Singapore.
Wirth engineers are working to meet the requirements of VTOL capability, 6 hour mission endurance, packaging a bulky payload mass, and providing that payload with hundreds of watts of continuous electrical power. Solving these issues has required extensive use of the company’s Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology and will demonstrate that Wirth Research’s UAS technology has almost limitless application across multiple sectors.
This UAS system can be adapted to carry and power a variety of sensors including stereo high-resolution gimbaled optical cameras, high-resolution infra-red sensors, LIDAR imagers, and ground penetrating radar sensors.
With apologies to Shakespeare, this effort seems to be a bit of ''gilding the lily'' in terms of what it can/supposed to do. I mean the late Paul McCready and friends have pretty much already done the work on long duration, nibble atmospheric general purpose aerial platforms. Slap some UAV avionics, etc. into them and get on with the project; no need to reinvent the wheel; this project is mostly military-industrial largesse.