Zuri has announced that at the Aero Friedrichshafen airshow this week it will present a fundamental development shift: Skeleton – a large-scale ground testbed, which will be used for testing ergonomics and all the electronics – the avionics, flight control, power and signal cabling and the hybrid propulsion system for the upcoming next-gen demonstrator.
“When building the Skeleton, the Zuri team used both experience and knowledge from flight tests of the 11-meter demonstrator Zuri 1.0, as well as from more than ten scaled models developed and flight tested” according to the press release. “To demonstrate the size and shape of the planned next-gen demonstrator, the designers used several materials to build the “Skeleton” testbed: mainly carbon composite boards, 3D printed parts, plywood and metal.
“The Testbed Skeleton should help to further accelerate the development of the Zuri aircraft, which, thanks to its 8 tilting engines, can take off vertically like a helicopter. However, the forward flight will be fundamentally more economical thanks to the wings, which makes it an attractive means of transport for both personal travel, cargo transport and rescue and observation missions.”
The Zuri team says it has a lot of experience with flight tests of the 11-meter demonstrator Zuri 1.0. “It turned out that testing in real conditions is still an important part of development, despite the development of computing options and simulations,” says Jakub Polesny, designer of Zuri. “The skeleton with wingspan of 8 meters represents the full size of the next-gen demonstrator we are preparing.”
For more information
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anzlvnJnJOs
(Image: Zuri)