• VTOL Vehicles for Personal Use, Close to Reality
• Sensor Tip: Position Sensor Redundancy Basics
• Application: Steering a Personal Mobility Device
• and more. |
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VTOL Vehicles for Personal Use Are Close to Reality
Vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicles has become a very active R & D category. It is closing in on production of vehicles anyone with the budget can buy. Two states: New Hampshire and Minnesota, have or are about to pass legislation permitting these vehicles to be used in their respective states.
The types of VTOL vehicles vary enough to be categorized differently, depending on their configuration. A flying vehicle with more than one rotor has come under the umbrella-term “multicopter.” The term quadcopter has existed for a while, but it only covers four rotors. Other categories include wheeled multicopters, winged multicopters, jet engine multicopters and others.
So, given that there are approaching ten major players including Alef, LEO, Doroni, Bellweather, Jet Optera, City Hawk and others, which ones show the most promise of being on the market in the U.S. soonest and getting market acceptance?
One that stands out is the Doroni H1-X. We may cover another one or two in the future, should they stand out as well.
Doroni’s CEO, Doron Merdinger, stated that he wanted to focus on minimizing potential issues by designing a vehicle with fewer moving parts than competitors that have rotating rotors, enhancing safety while reducing the amount of energy required for the rotors to lift the vehicle by incorporating them in wings. The H1-X wings incorporate patented technology Doroni calls a wing fence to reduce the amount of drag the holes in the wings for the fixed rotors would otherwise produce. These are integrated fins in the wings. As a result, the H1-X will carry two people included in a payload of 500 lbs. It will fly at up to 120 mph and travel for up to 40 minutes—about 60 miles. It is not designed to be used on roads, so it is more of a driveway to destination and back vehicle.
As far as safety is concerned, the H1-X also has wings, multiple redundant batteries and a ballistic parachute to deploy in case of substantial system or component failure.
Doroni states the cost of an H1-X will be about $350,000 and available starting in 2026.
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Position Sensor Redundancy Basics
In general, electrical term, Redundancy is the duplication of a device, a component, an input or an output to increase reliability, performance and obtain a backup when failure occurs.
In today’s highly automated Industrial environment, redundancy in position sensing is being utilized in various applications requiring a certain degree of safety integrity or reliability to prevent failures having the potential for harming lives and damaging properties and the environment. In adherence with the International Functional Safety Standard, engineers and scientists now design functioning systems or products, and then go through rigorous failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) to assess the failures’ occurrences rate, hazardous levels, and consequences to find mitigation solutions before releasing their products, equipment or implementing industrial systems.
Assessments for applying redundancy require the information acquisition of likelihood of the failure, frequency of the failure, consequence of the failure, and the prevention capacity level of the failure. Therefore, Safety Integrity Level’s (SIL), risk-graph of the IEC 61 508/61 511 has been the standard for rating the Safety and/or the Reliability of all products and systems utilized in the industry.
Position Sensors, as much as they need to adhere to the functional safety standard, they are mostly being used in the automation Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) industry to serve as safety and reliability devices themselves, along with Logic Solvers (PLCs & DCS) and Field control elements such as Actuators, Valves etc.
By introducing redundant sensors, Novotechnik’s can provide the industry with an additional layer enabling products, equipment and systems of meeting safety and reliability requirements necessary for meeting productivity and protection from harm and damage to the environment.
Most position sensors’ redundancy options fall in the full redundancy category options.
The Full Redundancy of a sensor requires two discrete electronics independently separated and active and two independently separated and active output connections. In Hall effect sensing, the two integrated hall effect plates within the semiconductor chip are isolated with an insulating material. The input supply voltage (VDD), the ground (VSS) and the output current pins are not only shielded, but for each sensing output, they are located on opposite sides of the chip body.
In Potentiometric sensing, the resistive tracks or wires and the wipers are not only clearly separated but are duplicated in mirror pattern manner to maintain the same electrical values; and the input supply voltage, the ground and the output voltage pins for each wiper & resistance track are also shielded and separated. |
Magnetic position sensor with redundancy drawing |
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Redundant potentiometric sensor drawing |
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Another redundancy scheme is today also available to improve safety and reliability, the Triple redundancy option. This option is as robust as it gets as it requires three discrete electronics independently separated with three independently separated output connections. Engineers can opt, at time, to maintain full redundancy with two discrete electronics active (or hot) and the third discrete electronic passive (or cold) on standby and available to give redundancy if one of the active electronics or output fails.
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Steering a Personal Mobility Device
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Omeo—a personal mobility device like no other. It is based on technology from Segway and adapted to a seated rider rather than standing. A rider controls the Omeo by shifting their weight forward, backward, left or right.
There is also a joystick used as an alternative control for turning but not forward or reverse motion. A redundant SP 2800 angle sensor is used to detect the rider left or right movement input from the seat and a second SP 2800 sensor is used to detect the joystick left / right position.
Learn more. |
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