Flike, the electric tricopter by a Hungarian team of engineers, took off the ground and marked its first manned flight, a year after the introduction of the concept on a piece of paper.
Thinking of transportation of the future, but by future I mean many decades from now, most people imagine flying cars and super complicated air-traffic city systems. I am guessing a big part of this has to do with all those sci-fi movies, that show us people in space suits, and mega cities with technologies that we can only dream of. But these “dreams” are in fact ideas of someone, who has simply not yet come up with the functioning prototype or a concept to turn them into reality.
So, back to flying cars, the idea might not be as far-fetched as we would think, at least not as far as technological advances go. A team of Hungarian enthusiastic engineers from Bay Zoltan Nonprofit Ltd. just managed to prove it. Not even a year after the guys stood in front of their drawing board, conceptualizing their first personal all-electric tricopter, which can carry a single person on board, the machine is up in the sky.
The super cool, drone-looking, tricopter is called the Flike. The name comes from “flying-bike”. Now, before the critics jump in- no, it does not require pedaling and it does not have wheels like the flying bike by a few Czech companies we showed you some time ago, but it is just as easy to learn how to fly, as it is to learn how to ride a bike (the inventors claim).
Already during the first tests, the Flike was able to lift 210 kg (463 lb) off the ground. It remained in the air for just under two minutes, successfully taking care of the wind, thanks to the six rotors, driven by individual electric disc motors. The power is provided by lithium polymer batteries, which could last up to 20 mins during hover flight, and up to the impressive 40 minutes during a cruise flight.
The six rotors are the features that allow the Flike to do all sorts of things, just like any conventional helicopter: among the long list of capabilities are turning, sidling, diving, rolling and hovering. The stability and altitude are ensured by a flight management computer, which is also there to keep the machine up in the air even in case of emergency fail of one of the electric motors.
The guys at Bay Zoltan could not be more pleased with the performance of their first prototype. Now that this proved successful, they can safely proceed with the next step on the plan- develop the commercial model, and hopefully find generous investors.
Image (c) Flike
