Whisper Aero wants to make aviation, and the rest of the world, quieter:
The world is loud. If delivery drones and air taxis – also known as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft – gain the level of market saturation investors are hoping for, cities and neighborhoods are only going to get noisier.
That's the assumption, anyway. But Whisper Aero does not seem to care much for assumptions.
The premise of the two-year-old startup is that there should not be a trade-off between technological progress and noise: You should be able to quietly rid your lawn of leaves, heat and cool buildings, and even take an air taxi ride. To get to that future, Whisper says it has developed a never-been-done-before electric propulsion device (to get really specific, an electric ducted fan) that's both quieter and more efficient than ones already on the market.
[...] Whisper has designed an electric-ducted fan that can be scaled up or down for different applications. Over the past two years, the company has designed, built and flown nine generations of this propulsor. They've settled on a product that both reduces the amplitude – how loud something is – and that shifts the tonal profile of the noise to something more pleasant. The company says they've even been able to move some of the tones into the ultrasonic, beyond what the human ear can detect.
[...] Following a well-trod path in aerospace, Whisper will focus its initial commercialization efforts with the U.S. Department of Defense, an agency that they've already been working with for testing. Whisper has scored a handful of small government contracts from the DOD, including the Air Force Research Lab, to validate their propulsor.
The relevance of a quiet aircraft to the DOD is likely obvious. Whisper has validated that it can fly a 55-pound drone with its electric-ducted fan at an altitude of 200 feet that is completely undetectable, at least by noise, from the ground. To put that in context, Moore said Boeing's popular military drone, the Insitu ScanEagle, would need to fly at least 3,000 feet above to not be heard.
"It's sort of a breakthrough in terms of what surveillance drones are capable of doing in terms of missions, by being able to get so close and not be detected," Moore said. "Especially at night, where you won't be able to see it. It can be flying and loitering right overhead and you would have no idea that's there."
[...] The company is quick to point out that the benefits don't just lie in decreased noise, but also in the efficiency gains – a metric that's all the more important as more of the world's technologies switch to electric, and must depend on the limited lifespan of batteries. The company also says that many aircraft have speeds that are limited by open rotors (or open propellors), as opposed to ducted. Instead of operating at 150 miles per hour, an eVTOL could potentially fly as fast as 300-400 miles per hour.
[...] "We are this future Pratt & Whitney mashed up with a Dyson," Moore said, referring to the giant aircraft engine maker and the consumer tech company best known for its vacuums and hair dryers.
"We're very anxious to take this technology to people's everyday life."
(Score: 3, Informative) by squeedles on Thursday April 20, @03:27AM (2 children)
A couple months ago Zipline started showing off their next gen skycrane-style delivery drones with an oddly shaped propeller that they claim is much quieter. Looks like a V with a counterweight on the other side of the spindle. Nobody has hard details yet, but this fellow did some tests on similar configurations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z58RORCUTao [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday April 20, @05:00AM
Great vid, I like his test methodology. Here's another that popped up, goes into more propeller designs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLnkwe-nr5w [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Thursday April 20, @05:26AM
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=23/03/21/0333233 [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday April 20, @06:49AM (3 children)
I live in the boonies way up north and I can tell you: city dwellers, even in small cities, don't know what quiet is. I'm talking listen-to-your-own-heartbeat sort of quiet.
And so there's one thing I know for a fact: there is no innocuous level of noise. Any noise decreases your quality of life. It's just that most people don't realize it.
So yeah, anything that reduces noise pollution is great news for everybody who's subjected to it, even if the noise seems relatively low-level. Because low-level noise isn't no noise and there's a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20, @08:45AM (1 child)
I dunno: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ItsQuietTooQuiet [tvtropes.org]
😉
I guess temperate forests are quiet especially in winter and when there's no/low wind, but in my experience, tropical jungles are pretty noisy. Insects, birds etc. So if suddenly things are quiet, I'd actually be a bit more stressed.
(Score: 1, Troll) by DannyB on Thursday April 20, @09:25PM
If a tree fell in the forest and there were no other genders around, wood it still be the man's fault?
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Informative) by MIRV888 on Thursday April 20, @10:03AM
On a good night in the winter, the city can be dead quiet late and night. It's always amazing. It never lasts more than a few minutes, but it does occur in fits and spells.
(Score: 2) by MIRV888 on Thursday April 20, @09:58AM
I'm losing his pattern captain.