Clear Prop #11 | In Conversation with Hector Xu, Founder of Rotor.ai
Remotely-piloted helicopters for aerial firefighting & more
In this edition, I sit down with Hector Xu, the founding CEO of Rotor. Back in May in West Palm Beach, I had the pleasure of introducing Hector during a session on autonomous flight at VFS’s Forum 79. As you can see in the video, Hector gives a great perspective on the evolution of autonomous systems across vertical flight platforms. He then consolidates this past progression by some of the key reasons why many projects (unfortunately) did not achieve commercial success. (All recorded sessions of Forum 79 can be accessed here - just need to sign up as a member of the VFS)!
In his previous life at MIT, Hector built an ion propulsion airplane demonstrator, taking the future flight community by storm. Now, Hector is tackling another seemingly impossible problem to solve, and that is building unmanned, remotely piloted helicopters for aerial work applications.
As you’ll see below, I will first breakdown the paper Hector and his co-founder Greg McMillan wrote on the state of helicopter aerial work today. The authors go into detail across several industries that vitally rely on helicopters while highlighting specific areas where novel technologies such as automation may make sense.
In the final section, I have an insightful conversation with Hector where we dive into the details and expose a perspective that goes beyond the paper itself.
Helicopter Aerial Work: Technology to Meet Growing Needs in Critical Missions
In many industries, consumers vote with their money and the product is quickly iterated to fit the needs of the market. However, in aerospace where development cycles are long with regulatory constraints on launching commercial products, this market feedback mechanism is essentially non-existent. Therefore, product development and innovation requires diligent analysis before introducing a certified helicopter or on-board equipment to the market. To help address this challenge, this paper lays out the value chain of helicopter aerial work (HAW) from an economic, operational, and technological perspective so as to accelerate the adoption of innovation in this space without decades of lead time.
To do so, the authors interviewed 180 helicopter operators, their customers, and other industry experts. While firefighting was at the core of this study, other use cases with a diverse set of services, mission types, and flight profiles were explored including construction, agriculture, utilities, and offshore. Key problems and shortcomings were identified, and an intelligent approach of introducing tech into the HAW industry was proposed.
Key takeaways:
The structure of the HAW industry differs considerably to commercial air transport (CAT). HAW is 1) seasonal, 2) missions have unpredictable requirements, and 3) individual use cases (e.g. agriculture, forest fires, etc.) each form only a minority of the total revenue opportunity. In comparison, CAT is 1) routine throughout the year, 2) routes and procedures are standard, and 3) network effects dominate.
While the clients of HAW (e.g. firefighters, oil & gas firms, etc.) have generally low price sensitivity, seasonality dictates helicopter operators to compete on price. This is mainly because each use case is in demand only during certain months of the year, leading to an oversupply of available helicopters and pilots in the off-season. For example, wildfire missions mainly take place in the summer whereas search & rescue ops require on-demand service without predictability. This also forces operators to operate multiple types of aircraft, catering to multiple use cases.
This industry structure results in inconsistent revenues, unpredictable maintenance costs, high insurance burdens, specialized pilot training requirements, and therefore lower margins. The industry faces a chronic bankruptcy problem due to these.
Operational challenges reduce the efficacy of HAW. Honing in on aerial firefighting, companies only tend to fly under VFR conditions and during daytime. Expansion of the flight envelope into IFR and night could have a significant impact on suppressing fires and saving lives.
The high-risk nature of ops and the high-stakes character of the missions lead to a lower willingness to integrate novel tech into HAW. Therefore, an incremental introduction of innovation - rather than a “move fast and break things” approach - is proposed to ensure 1) stakeholder buy-in, 2) immediate operational gains, and 3) iteration to achieve eventual revolutionary transformation. The low-hanging fruit here are health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS), situational awareness (SA) systems – particularly for night and degraded visual environment operations – and uncrewed or optionally piloted systems.
The BFD: The majority of attention, whether from entrepreneurs or VCs, is directed towards aerial mobility applications utilizing novel vehicles such as eVTOLs. However, there are opportunities to target incumbent systems & workflows with new tech, potentially leading to exceptional outcomes where no one is looking. This is essentially the sailing ship effect in action where improvements in the incumbent technology are stimulated by transformation elsewhere in the ecosystem. The insight here is that the innovation coming out of eVTOLs - where a majority of venture investment is going towards - may not necessarily trickle down to HAW as the requirements are quite different. For example, HAW does not care about noise nor sustainability. Therefore, more attention needs to be paid to innovation that meets the needs of these existing use cases where there already is proven, sizable demand. In the case of HAW, the global market stands at $53B, more than enough to be attractive to investors from a top-line perspective.
Pamir: Wonderful to have you here Hector. Let’s begin with your background a bit. How did you arrive at this point in time as an engineer? What motivates you as an entrepreneur?
Hector: My passion for tackling moonshot problems really solidified at MIT during my PhD. Since 2013, an ion propulsion aircraft concept was being conceived by Professor Stephen Barrett (my advisor), for which the chance of it succeeding was thought to be very low. It was more than 1%, which was promising, but certainly less than 50% chance of it actually executing sustained flight. People in this space used to think that it was not possible for another century. I had the fortune to join the project at the right time, designing and building the aircraft that eventually took its first sustained flight. It took a bit of science, a bit of engineering, and a good amount of dreaming. It was one of the most exhilarating experiences for me as a young engineer.
Pamir: How did you transition into building remotely-piloted helicopters for aerial firefighting?
Hector: We think that our technology could be applicable to a broad set of autonomous VTOL use cases. However, when we started talking to customers, we quickly realized that firefighters had the most desperate need among all. They have some of the toughest aerial missions out there and there aren’t many people working on building the right kit for them. At worst, they are acquiring second-hand military gear, trying to keep them flying for as long as possible. At best, if they have the capital, they acquire slightly modified platforms directly from the likes of Sikorsky. Even in this case, there is no product-market fit here. At a deep emotional level, we felt the need to build platforms that are suited to those who are flying helicopters literally into the fire and for the ground crews who have to collaborate with them.
There are great autonomy companies out there that are building platforms for passenger & cargo applications. For us, a pragmatic go-to-market is key. I am a firm believer in that entrepreneurs who win tend to be those that deliver value to the world sooner. It’s much more exciting for me to build a company deploying technology that effectively fights wildfires within three years than a 13-year time horizon, as may be the case in more “sexy” use cases of AAM such as urban air taxis.
Pamir: What kind of value will Rotor’s technology bring to aerial firefighters?
Hector: There are three areas where we believe Rotor’s technology in aerial firefighting will be a game changer: 1) reducing risk to platforms and lives, 2) increased operational availability and thus firefighting effectiveness, and 3) better unit economics.
Last year, there was a terrible accident that happened in New Mexico when four government officials died aboard a helicopter, fighting an intense fire season. The community was devastated. Turning these vehicles into their unmanned versions, similar to a DJI drone, but with the payload and range capability of a helicopter can save lives. Big value add.
Rotor’s technology will also enable helicopters to fly in visually-degraded environments (e.g. smoke) and at night. Today, firefighting helicopters can fly 6-8 hours a day. We will increase this number to 24…essentially around the clock. There will, of course, be certain limitations such as wind and icing but there is no reason that operational frequency cannot be increased given the existing advanced sensor suites such as inertial solutions, LiDAR, and multispectral cameras.
Taking the pilot out of the cockpit and enabling them to fly from anywhere plus the operational scale gained due to higher utilization reduce labor costs, increase effective payload and range, and amortize OPEX over more potential flight hours. We believe this will make the unit economics more profitable, solving one of the major structural problems of the industry in the next 10-20 years.
Pamir: What kind of autonomy are you building into the Rotor product? Will pilots be high-level operators or will they be able to tactically control the helicopter from afar as well?
Hector: Our design philosophy is to give the remote pilot choice…the choice to be able to manage the operation at a high- and low-level of control as the situation demands. We are building three modes of operation that are hierarchical: 1) raw command mode, 2) manual mode, and 3) autopilot. The raw command mode is essentially your “stick-and-rudder” way of controlling an aircraft - the pilot gives mechanical commands to the control surfaces. With the target customer we have in aerial firefighting, pilots will need this kind of control to ensure maneuverability at low-altitude around obstacles and dynamic environments. In this scenario, we want to give the pilot as much freedom as possible while reducing the in-cockpit distractions one would get flying a conventional helicopter.
The manual mode, on the other hand, will enable the pilots to control “rates”. Instead of controlling the aerodynamic surfaces, the pilot gives rate commands during turns, climbs, and such. This mode will enable the aircraft to operate within a safe flight envelope at all times.
Finally, we are building autonomy at a higher level where the remote pilot defines the waypoints & mission objective and the helicopter takes care of the rest. It's akin to more abstract mission management systems used in beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations today, similar to the folks that are planning for autonomous urban air mobility operations. However, we don't think this mode is necessarily the best one for aerial firefighting or many helicopter aerial work missions.
Since our remote piloting modes are dependent on real-time communications with the pilot, we are building features similar to the Garmin Autoland for helicopters if we ever experience loss of communications mid-operation.
Pamir: What are your 3 key messages that you want the future flight community to be aware of?
Hector: One big message here is that remotely-piloted aircraft are coming! The sort of fully autonomous operation that could enable urban air mobility at scale is still some ways off, but we should expect to see remotely-piloted aircraft in operation soon. We’ll be able to fly aircraft more safely and cheaply than ever before. And it's going to happen in the next year or two. Rotor is going to be flying revenue-generating missions in 2024, which will be made possible using FAA exemptions & waivers that enable certain types of commercial operations without requiring a type certificate. I think that’s just very exciting and people should feel very excited. Essentially, 15 years of AAM promises that can finally be delivered to the real world.
For the firefighters out there - be open-minded, and be prepared to see Robinson helicopters without pilots sitting in them in your airspace! You’ll be able to talk to them on the radio and there will be a real pilot on the other end. They’ll be doing the same missions but will be carrying less weight of course.
For investors and other folks out there - we have gone through the hype cycle. We are beyond the trough of disillusionment with autonomous flight where real, pragmatic solutions are being implemented today, not just in our space but also across air medical, industrial, and disaster logistics applications. The progress companies like Zipline, Pyka, and Guardian Agriculture have made is all part of the same innovation umbrella of autonomy here. Now is a great time to join the industry. Find out more about it. Read our papers. Reach out!
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