US manufacturer Schweizer Aircraft and its Japanese distributor, Kawada Industries, have teamed to develop an unmanned derivative of the Schweizer 300 single-piston light helicopter.
According to vice-president and assistant general manager of Kawada's aviation division, Tadahiro Kawada, the "RoboCopter 300" is "basically a standard Schweizer 300CB with three-axis-gyro automatic stabilisation equipment and a rotor auto-engage system". He says that the helicopter is being developed for agricultural crop- spraying, pipe-line patrols, aerial crane work and reconnaissance missions.
The powerplant is the standard Schweizer 300 125kW (170hp) Lycoming 360 four-cylinder engine, but there are plans to produce a derated version which can run on automobile petrol. The control system has been designed specifically for the RoboCopter, based on a "conventional-model car" radio-control unit. The range has not yet been extended beyond 100m (330ft) visual.
The payload is 295kg, but Kawada says that he hopes to increase this to 450kg as trials continue. Already, he says, the lift ability is "significantly greater than that of other unmanned helicopters".
The project team, based at Kawada's headquarters in Tokyo, has completed 10h of flight tests since October. There are no plans yet to apply for certification, although Kawada says that this may only be two years away. After development, the RoboCopter is likely to become part of the Schweizer product line at Elmira, New York.
Source: Flight International
