Look Ma, No Hands!

In the 1990s, Tad McGeer pioneered the development of lightweight, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are now widely used by the military for surveillance. The company he founded, The Insitu Group, was later acquired by Boeing. Now, McGeer has designed a new UAV, the Flexrotor, which he thinks will be ideal for a variety of nonmilitary applications such as weather reconnaissance and geological surveys.

The Flexrotor weighs only 42 pounds and has a 10-foot wingspan. It can fly nearly 2,500 miles at speeds of up to 90 miles per hour and at altitudes of up to 25,000 feet on just 3 gallons of gas. What we intend to do with this, which has not been achieved before, is to make it a completely hands-free operating system, says McGeer. The Flexrotor will operate from a lightweight base station and its launch, retrieval, refueling and parking will be programmed to happen automatically without operator assistance. By reducing manpower costs, the UAV will be more appropriate and economical for civilian use.

Another important feature of the Flexrotor is its ability to handle both vertical takeoffs and landings (like a helicopter) and horizontal flight (like a plane). The UAV uses a tail-sitting designit launches and lands on its tailthat originated in the 1950s with full-size airplanes, but McGeer is pioneering its use for UAVs. Its a novel feature, says McGeer, one that will allow the Flexrotor to launch and land with less room and reach previously inaccessible areas. This makes it potentially more adept at operating from smaller ships while at sea on weather expeditions.

The first Flexrotor field flight test occurred Sept. 7 with a prototype vehicle. I was pleased with it, says McGeer, who hopes to see the Flexrotor in service by 2012. The UAV will be manufactured by Aerovel, a company McGeer founded in 2006 in Husum, Wash., located in the Columbia Gorge area. The next big project will be marketing development. It will be nice to eventually see these aircraft out being used for the general good, says McGeer.