Vahana’s Alpha Two has undergone 50 full-scale test flights totaling over five hours of flight time, but they’ve still got a long ways to go. More flights have been planned throughout the year at the Pendleton UAS Range in Oregon as the team checks flight controls, navigation, failure detection, mitigation, and noise during flight.
Vahanah’s Alpha Two, a project by Airbus’s A3 subsidiary, has eight electric props that point to the sky for takeoff and landing, and tilt forward when zooming in motion for fast winged flight over long ranges. Vahana has flown for more than seven minutes at a time and reached speeds of 60 mph.
In the video below, the Alpha Two reacts to impulse inputs, a test to see how the vehicle responds to certain roll, pitch, yaw, and thrust inputs to guide flight controls during development. The aircraft rises to a 210-foot high hover and tilts forward before accelerating to 57 miles per hour.
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