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Clean fuel electric multirotor aircraft for personal air transportation and manned or unmanned operation

  • US 9,764,822 B2
  • Filed: 04/29/2015
  • Issued: 09/19/2017
  • Est. Priority Date: 05/01/2014
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A full-scale, multirotor all-electric aircraft system sized, dimensioned, and configured for transporting one or more human occupants and payload, the system comprising:

  • a multirotor airframe fuselage, having a structure supporting the total vehicle weight together with the one or more human occupants and payload;

    a multirotor upper truss structure connected to the multirotor airframe fuselage;

    a plurality of motor and propeller assemblies attached to the multirotor upper truss structure, the plurality of motor and propeller assemblies each comprising a plurality of pairs of counter-rotating propeller blades, the plurality of motor and propeller assemblies being controlled by a plurality of motor controllers;

    an electrical power-generating system comprising one of;

    a hydrogen fuel-cell system comprising a hydrogen storage tank, a plurality of fuel cell subsystems, one or more air-driven turbochargers supplying compressed air to the plurality of fuel cell subsystems, and a plurality of fuel cells supplying voltage and current to the plurality of motor controllers, wherein the hydrogen fuel-cell system combines hydrogen from the hydrogen storage tank with compressed air to generate electrical voltage and current;

    ora motor-generator system comprising a fuel storage tank, one or more hydrocarbon-fueled motors, and a plurality of motor-driven high voltage generators to supply current to said multirotor motor controllers;

    a power distribution and circuit breaker subsystem autonomously monitoring and controlling distribution of the generated electrical voltage and current to the plurality of motor controllers and an avionics system; and

    wherein the plurality of motor controllers are commanded by one or more autopilot control units, where the one or more autopilot control units control the commanded electrical voltage and torque or current for each of the plurality of motor and propeller assemblies and track the rotations per minute (RPM) and the torque produced or the current consumed at each of the plurality of motor and propeller assemblies.

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