R550X

[Minquanlu]

What are your thoughts on this new R550X from Robinson Helicopters?
Un-crewed they say, and some possibilities are
1. Logistics and delivery
2. SAR
3. Precision Agriculture
4. Infrastructure inspection
5. Beyond visual line of sight operations

And are just starting points.

[love flying]

I’m curious about how insurers will handle it. It seems like there is less jeopardy and therefore more risk taking?
But it seems like a fantastic gadget with obvious use cases

[helihub]

The R550X is _not_ a Robinson product. Rotor Technologies are developing the R550X and it seems they will buy in new R44 airframes from Robinson first. It is thus a Rotor Technologies product

see https://rotor.ai/r550x (https://rotor.ai/r550x) which includes a list of FAQ at the bottom of that page

[Ascend Charlie]

Why buy it with expensive windows when cheap sheet metal would do the job - nobody needs to see out of it.

[rugmuncher]

Windows (redundant) are off the shelf, replacing them with sheet metal would require a mahoosive english wheel or a hydro-press..

[FH1100 Pilot]

Interesting! I guess the age of autonomous civilian aircraft has sort of snuck up on us more quickly than we (at least I) imagined. And, being a single guy, I have a pretty fertile imagination ;-) Anyway, there's a company that recently successfully demonstrated a completely unmanned chock-to-chock, short cross-country cargo flight of a Cessna Caravan. Think of a company like FedEx, that utilizes a fleet of Caravans. Imagine a remote pilot sitting in a control center somewhere, who can "fly" a couple of different cargo flights in a couple of different aircraft in a given shift. If I were the CEO of FedEx, I'd be salivating at the thought of being able to cut my pilot staff by some order of magnitude, and not have to worry about whiny pilots complaining that, "The coffee in the FBO pilot lounge was cold and it was crowded and loud and I couldn't get a good nap while I waited for the cargo for my return flight, and oh yeah, I'll be leaving next week because United called and gave me a start date..."

At the same time, it doesn't take too much imagination to come up with uses for a totally autonomous R-44. For instance, take cherry-drying. R-44's are used extensively in that task during the growing season (June through August) in the northwestern U.S. I mean, there's tons of them. It doesn't only rain during daylight hours, and growers would love to be able to dry at night. But aircraft are limited to daylight ops only because it's usually one-pilot-per-ship and humans can't operate 24-7. With these drone R-44's, the remote operators would not necessarily need to be fully-certified helicopter pilots - no need to demonstrate competence in autorotations and cross-country navigation and slope landings. So certification could theoretically be quicker and cheaper. And suddenly there's no need to hire a $300/day "real" pilot to sit around and wait for it to rain. Plus, without an interior (seats, instrument panel, air conditioning and all that stuff), you could rig that thing to carry more fuel and stay up longer, without the need to stop so often for aircraft refueling and silly pilot "physiological" needs like taking a leak and getting lunch.. The grower I worked for always used to roll his eyes when I'd have to stop because my ship only carried 1.5 hours of fuel. Avgas? Feh. Run it on car gas!

The future is here, folks, like it or not.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune.org-vbulletin/600x500/monkey_puppet_1955844c5e30d2a307e1d1b2904411094b0837c7.jpg

[Minquanlu]

I see. Thanks. So it is not a Robinson after all.
R550X is like a drone. Unmanned. It will definitely compete with drones.
That is a tough competition. A big gamble probably.

What does everyone think?