KapetAir is a fixed wing VTOL UAV featuring patent pending rotors that is designed to become a workhorse for remote sensing operations whether they are mapping, precision agriculture or industrial inspections.
We have combined the best of multirotors and fixed-wings into a configuration that is both fully autonomous and has a long range. There is no hassle of hand launching that is associated with fixed wing UAVs and there is no need for a large open areas for landing.
With the wingspan of a bit over 3 meters, KapetAir VTOL has the endurance of 2 hours during and can cover up to 120 km. It has a large payload bay that can carry up to 1kg of versatile payload modules.
KapetAir VTOL UAV is watertight and can take-off and land from water.
Prototyping phase and test flights are behind us and we are working on the first batch of beta-units. We are looking for both beta-users and partners.
Comments
@Tom Pittenger
On PX4.
@Luka Which open-source autopilot is it mostly based on?
@Tom Pittenger No, not from scratch. Custom is a wrong word definitely. Firmware is a modification and compilation of existing open-source code.
@Luka btw, I think stock ArduPlane v3.8.3 will fly this and articulate the tilt-motors without any code changes. Worth a look.
@Luka custom from scratch? That sounds unwise with open-source solutions out there with Billions of flight hours of experience. Is it based on an open-source autopilot? That would make waaay more sense.
@Andrew Rabbitt it can do 30 km there and 30km back in 45 mins. Design cruise speed is 65km/h and speeds up to 110km/h are still within the envelope.
@Tom Pittenger - We are running our custom firmware on Pixhawk2 flight controller
@Chris Cloutier - That design challenge we have solved by the special hub for VTOL rotors that is making sure the propellers are always open and ready to start in vertical mode. In horizontal mode they will close if the motor is not running to create less drag. This is within the scope of our patent.
Very elegant design. How do you prevent a nacelle or ground propeller strike when powering off the front motors after landing or an aborted take off?
What flight controller hardware & software are you running?
Nice machine! Can it do a 60km round-trip mission inside 45mins...?
@Graham Dyer - the reason for using rear rotor is to increase the efficiency of propulsion during horizontal (airplane) mode at high speeds (over 20m/s) using fixed pitch propellers.However, forward two motors can be used at any time during the flight. This feature also serves as a redundancy.
@Sebastian S - Thanks for bringing this to my attention.
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