{"id":12413,"date":"2020-05-20T19:04:36","date_gmt":"2020-05-21T02:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/?p=12413"},"modified":"2020-06-10T20:43:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-11T03:43:33","slug":"pyka-electric-autonomous-and-capable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/cafe.foundation\/blog\/pyka-electric-autonomous-and-capable\/","title":{"rendered":"Pyka: Electric, Autonomous, and Capable"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The Autonomous Airplane of the Future”<\/h4>\n

Conceived in Oakland and Palo Alto, California but flying in New Zealand, Pyka\u2019s fixed-wing electric aircraft<\/a> represents a new approach in its design and application.\u00a0 Its makers say, \u201cWe’re building the autonomous electric airplanes of the future,\u201d and its complement of innovative on-board electronics certainly seems to bear that out.<\/span><\/p>\n

eVTOL News <\/span><\/i>reports Pyka co-founder and CEO Michael Norcia interned with Joby Aviation and moved on to spend two years as a power systems engineer with Wisk.\u00a0 Having experienced the difficulties with vertical lift, \u201c…when Norcia and his co-founders \u2014 Chuma Ogunwole, Kyle Moore, and Nathan White \u2014 struck out on their own three years ago, they decided to take a more practical approach: sidestepping the technical challenges specific to VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft with an STOL (Short Take Off and Landing) design, and the regulatory hurdles by seeking out unmanned applications to serve as stepping stones to future passenger-carrying operations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pyka explored several configurations before deciding on the current tri-motor arrangement<\/p><\/div>\n

Having completed the prestigious Y combinator startup accelerator, the company quickly raised a total of $11M in funding (led by the VC-firm Prime Movers Lab), and the partners are now embarked on creating a conventional configuration with an unconventional amalgam of attributes.\u00a0 TechCrunch explained the business plan<\/a> that would lead from agricultural work to personal flight.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Pyka’s tri-motor craft now flying in New Zealand<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201c Pyka wants to make \u2018flying cars\u2019 a reality with its auto-piloting single-person planes. The company has already built a 600 lb plane that flies itself, [and] can take off and land in 90 feet. But since regulators want to see tons of testing before allowing humans aboard, Pyka has developed a placeholder business doing crop dusting in New Zealand. That helps it earn $600 per hour while logging the hours necessary to prepare for the human transportation market. Crop dusting alone is a $1.5 billion business in the US. But with employees from Zee airplanes and Google\u2019s Waymo, Pyka aims to become a first-mover in self-flying personal planes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Several versions appear to have been built, and a tri-motor drone is flying around farms down under.\u00a0 Earlier configurations had up to six under-wing motors, while the designers seem to have settled on a motor under each wing with one atop the vertical fin, tri-motor approach.\u00a0 Each motor produces eight kilowatts (10.7 horsepower), enough for the 600-pound craft to lift off in 300 feet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For identification, we\u2019ll call the craft shown in this video the ultralight version.\u00a0 Its 90-kilogram (200-pound) payload allows spraying the very farm fields it uses as its airports.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n