Schiebel kindly sent me this morning a link with this video on it. Its pretty amazing and certainly to my mind points at how Europe really is pulling ahead of the USA. (starting a flame war there) Imagine how difficult it would have been test flying the system in the USA.
I think there will be a rush towards large helicopter based systems now. This will become the minimum expected standard from movie UAS. It will cost a bit that's for sure.
It excited me enough yesterday to add it to our UAS Got Talent tab, if you have an entry then please suggest away.
Its on show in Las Vegas this week.
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One of the most expensive parts contained in the price tag of the initial package (btw. it's for 2 birds + 1 ground station) is actually the antenna system (made in the USA), training is per person (and much less) and not accumulative 750000
The sad thing is that people like Rotomotion have been making systems for years and because of where they are based (USA) their growth has been limited. I cannot get over the price tag on the Schiebel system what a bird though!
6 hours of flight time, with extended fuel tank up to 10h; 18.000ft ceiling; 200km high data link (depending on ground station). Can perform auto land on ship's , follow convoy's etc.
50kg Payload; 200kg max TOW; up to 100 kits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_Yy0aaXoE4&feature=related
Nice, expensive, loud.
Who knows, it could become a remote-controlled Open Source project!
That's sort of what I was thinking. I don't really see a studio buying it. It would be bought by a boutique A/V place and rented out as a service (complete with trained operators).
Yes, the Schiebel's are very nice helicopters. They are a very professional helicopter and work very well operationally. But the cost is going to keep them from entering the private sector (even the movie industry, a film services company, and some military contracts for that matter) for a while. The S-100 cost about $2 million (that is a helicopter and a ground station) and there is a mandatory $750,000 training coarse. That is all before you start adding the price of the sensor to the mix!
It will be nice when the airspace is opened for commercial use UAVs and the movie industry can start taking advantage of the technology that is out there to help them get the job done.
The real deal here is the Cineflex. You can develop any of the multicopter platforms to shoot decent video and carry the weight. The Cineflex makes cinema-workflow integration - oh so much easier...
For instance, in the old days, RED didn't have a out of the box means to grab it's 4K raw out on the wire (e.g. SDI): you needed to turn the camera off, remove the disk back, then plug in a firewire cable or their $$$ cable. That was ok for independents, but the studios hated it. Couldn't get the media into their content management systems without some sort of manual encoding, metadata entry or sneaker net. Competitor cameras from Arri/Sony/Phillips had the capability, though lower res... In cinema, getting the media to your dailies asap, in other words through the work-flow, is crucial--and the cineflex supports that.
Renting a manned copter can be in the tens of thousands per hour. If this thing is a million, then no studio will buy it--BUT a A/V rental shop (like SIR or ProHD) may...
I heard this thing costs in the millions? If that's the case.... how is it better or cheaper than a manned helicopter?
Movies will buy in the best they can and this machine will pass certification standards. Size is going to matter soon when you have to use approved connectors and other heavy stuff to be legal.
Your right Coptaire, its like a limbo highjump sort of competition depending on where you stand.
The bar has been raised, from an AP multirotor point of view.
The bar has been lowered, from an heli crew point of view.
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