The Rise of the Hybrid

The history of scientific advancement has been written by people who weren’t satisfied with the current standard. They were always pushing toward what's ‘next,’ using the achievements of those who came before them as jumping off points for new and exciting discoveries. It is this mentality that pushed humanity from the first powered flight in 1903, to the first supersonic flight in 1947, to the first orbit around the moon in 1968.

Pioneers, in any field, are always looking to push the envelope of what is possible, and the drone industry is no exception. Even while the first commercial implementations of drones continue to make headlines, some are already looking forward to what might come next. Currently, most drones are designed to operate on the ground, in the air, on or under the water, and they will remain within just one of those environments. However, as history would predict, that standard is not enough to satisfy many. Instead, they ask the question:

What if drones could break through those boundaries? Well now they have in the form of the Hybrid Drone.

The basic theory behind ‘hybrid’ drones is simple: An unmanned vehicle which can operate in more than one environment at a time. For example, the AquaMAV (Aquatic Micro Aerial Vehicle), a product of Imperial College London’s Aerial Robotics Laboratory, can both operate both in the air, and underwater. The fixed-wing drone, designed for use in monitoring water health, can drop from the sky, gather data or samples from the water, then propel itself back into flight using a jet of water. To quote the lab’s website, the AquaMAV “dives like a gannet and launches like a flying fish.” A clever design, the AquaMAV allows first responders to gather vital data close to natural disasters or man-made accidents. The drone’s nature as an aerial vehicle, up until it dives into the water, allows for greater versatility in operating in potentially hazardous or hard-to-access (by water or ground) environments.

For other companies, the design philosophy behind hybrid drones is as simple as ‘why make two drones, when one will do the trick?’ Take Oakland University’s Loon Copter, for example. At first glance, it appears to be just an ordinary quadcopter; but the Loon Copter is unique in its ability to operate in water, as well as in the sky. Unlike the AquaMAV, this drone can also maneuver while submerged, rotating its rotors to provide continued propulsion underwater. While the Loon Copter’s design may interest photographers and filmmakers more than disaster relief specialists, the inherent utility of an unmanned vehicle that can operate both in the air and underwater with a significant level of maneuverability is hard to ignore.

On a grander scale, one only needs to look at the proposed solutions for the challenges faced by urban transportation: Autonomous ground vehicles and aerial taxi services. What if one vehicle could be both? The PopUp Airbus hybrid drone claims to be just that. As shown in this video, the drone, which resembles something out of a science fiction movie (perhaps due to all the CGI), is designed to be modular, with interchangeable wheel and rotor able to be easily attached and detached during transition between applications. The ‘wheels’ get the passenger, through more traditional road-based avenues, from the user’s given starting point (home, work, etc.) to a designated take-off/landing zone, where the aerial component, resembling an up-sized version of the standard quadcopter drone, connects to the vehicle. The ground component detaches, and the rotors lift the vehicle into the air, avoiding urban traffic and ground speed restrictions on its way to another landing zone close to the passenger’s preferred destination. From there, the rotor component passes the vehicle off to another ground component at this new landing zone, and the passenger rides the rest of the way on the ground. It’s as potentially revolutionary as it is entirely theoretical. The video states the concept could become a reality in 7-10 years, which is to say that it doesn’t actually exist yet.

Not all hybrid ground-air drones are audacious glints in the eyes of forward-thinking research teams. The Panther autonomous vehicle, manufactured by California-based company Advanced Tactics, promises to fill another of the most widely-covered applications for drones: Package delivery. The vehicle, capable of carrying up to seven pounds with the ground mobility components attached, is designed for both flight and ground transport, using its six rotors and four wheels to navigate environments more efficiently than a pure ground or air-based counterpart. What the Panther lacks in futuristic design aesthetic and revolutionary visions for the future of transportation, it makes up for by actually existing. You can buy the Panther, right now. A two-wheel drive variant will cost you around three thousand US dollars, but you can buy it. It may not be graceful, and it may look like a flying brick with wheels strapped to the bottom, but often the rough, silly early designs like the Panther are precursors to the things that will truly revolutionize the applications they operate in, the first steps on the road to the gleaming, slick future envisioned by companies like Airbus.

An astute observer of the industry will notice that the more ambitious hybrid drone designs exist only in brief, computer generated videos full of generic platitudes, lofty promises, and idealistic visions of the future. The reality is that many of the technological requirements of even the more ‘traditional’ applications of drones are still in their infancy, with further advancement required in areas like autonomous operation or payload efficiency necessary for drones to begin to alter the landscape, but the mere existence of these concepts shows that these advances are coming and coming fast.

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