14 DAY TRIAL // A lot of hype has been building around drones these days and we have seen a lot of new models launch on the market, including those little pocketable editions. But all these flying quad-copters have a major disadvantage attached to them: they offer a limited flying time.
And when we say limited, we mean a meager 25 minutes tops. But luckily, there is hope for drone aficionados after all. Horizon Unmanned Systems might have a solution to this problem in the works.
The company wants to replace the average lithium battery that usually powers drones with fuel cells. A prototype called the Hycopter UAV has already been readied and can fly between 2.5 and 4 hours depending on payload.
Lithium batteries are used in the drone scenario due to the need to keep the flying quad-copters light and stable. But there’s an important negative side effect to this setup - drones can’t fly more than half an hour. Add a payload into the equation, like a camera or a package (think Amazon delivery system), and the juice levels drop even more.
Hycopter uses hydrogen to fly for longer periods of time
But this is not the case of the Hycopter, which instead of using lithium batteries takes advantage of 120g of hydrogen gas to take off.
The gas then passes through a lithium polymer hybrid fuel cell in order to be turned into electricity, which can power the drone for hours. To compare, the energy generated is equal to the power that a 3 kg / 6.6 lb lithium battery can offer.
The drone is still in development stage, and before the product makes it out on the market, a lot of things might change.
While the prototype uses clear acrylic tubes to house the gas, the real life product might utilize 5 mm thick polymer lined carbon fiber instead.
The drone weighs 5 kg / 11 lbs and can carry up to 1 kg / 2.2 lbs. Even as the prototype has yet to take off for the first time, Horizon Unmanned Systems is already accepting pre-orders for the device.
We don’t currently have any information related to pricing, but the idea of a drone with longer flight time will probably appeal to many consumers, as well as tech giants like Amazon and Google.
