In 2019 Haofeng “Hector” Xu, having a background in aerospace engineering and presently pursuing a PhD in MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, started learning to fly helicopters. The experience, fraught with risk, led him to consider how helicopter flight could be made safer. In 2021 Xu founded Rotor Technologies, an autonomous helicopter company focused on safety and broadening potential aviation use cases by retrofitting existing helicopters with sensors and software.
Rotor’s autonomous helicopters are faster, longer-lasting, have heavier payloads than battery-powered drones and are already used in demonstration flights, with the company planning to commence sales later in the year. These helicopters currently handle some of the dangerous flights often involving pilots. By using an established helicopter model, the company was able to fast-track to commercialization.
Upon founding the company, Xu hired Yiou He as CTO and gathered a number of MIT affiliates for his team, developing a strong core of educated and experienced engineers. To get the company up and running, assistance was secured from the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program, and the National Science Foundation’s New England Innovation Corps program.
One of the first decisions Rotor made when starting out was to retrofit a known aircraft from the Robinson Helicopter Company as opposed to building one from scratch. This decision worked well with Rotor’s plan to install their “fly by wire” system onto the aircraft, which is essentially a set of computers and motors to control the flight, as well as several communication tools and advanced sensors.
The company also provides 24/7 supervision of flights with their human supervision system called Cloudpilot, which allows for the best of autonomous systems and human decision-making skills. Beginning with flights in remote areas, the company seeks to reduce human risks while slowly increasing its application areas.
The aircraft, R550X, current model developed by Rotor, can carry up to 1,212 pounds, travel over 120 miles per hour, and can fly for hours at a time with auxiliary fuel tanks. It can be used during times of restrictions for human pilots, like adverse weather or at night, and could also be used to send cargo to offshore locations.
Overall, Rotor aims to enhance safety and tackle long-term challenges that have hampered helicopter operators for many years. However, it also has visions for transforming daily life by making air travel safer, more autonomous and affordable. Rotor’s prominent objective for the near future is increasing its production rate from a handful of crafts to 50 or a 100 crafts a year.
