This baby almost flies itself
SkyRyse choppers make it easy on pilots
In a hangar in Hayward, software engineers are dreaming up a radical future for flying.
SkyRyse, a 2-year-old startup that revealed its plans this week, is retrofitting helicopters with technology to make them easier to fly.
It’s a precursor to “flying cars” — autonomous vertical takeoff and landing aircraft that one day could revolutionize urban transport. Companies like Airbus, Uber and Larry Page’s Kitty Hawk are all pursuing that futuristic vision.
SkyRyse’s systems include cameras and a type of radar called phased-array; a screen displaying a 360-degree view around the chopper; artificial intelligence; and decisionmaking algorithms to help the pilot choose the safest path to take.
“It won’t change the amount of hours I fly, but it will make me less exhausted, reducing the likelihood of mistakes,” Chris Smith, who has flown
helicopters for 13 years and now works for SkyRyse as a senior test pilot and mission commander, said in an email.
“Flying a helicopter is (as challenging as) riding a unicycle — every extremity has to simultaneously operate a stick or pedal,” said Mark Groden, a co-founder of SkyRyse, as he demonstrated various controls inside a light helicopter parked in a hangar at the Hayward Executive Airport. “It’s really taxing on pilots, they’re physically and emotionally spent at the end of a shift.”
Groden, 28, has a Ph.D. in sensor data fusion. He was Ohio’s state robotics champion at age 15, the same year he worked in an Air Force lab to build a drone used by the military in Afghanistan to search for improvised explosive devices.
SkyRyse announced Tuesday that it has a contract with the city of Tracy to transport first responders, including police, fire and searchand-rescue teams, to emergency situations starting in January. It just wrapped up a two-week trial there.
SkyRyse owns four Robinsons — singleengine, four-seat helicopters sometimes called “the Toyota Camrys of the sky” — plus some test aircraft. The city will pay an ongoing subscription fee for access, including a pilot’s services. Though SkyRise wouldn’t disclose that fee, it said it’s much cheaper for Tracy than buying a helicopter and hiring pilots and mechanics.
“A helicopter or any air support would never have been in reach for a city our size with our budget,” said Tracy Police Lieutenant Terry Miller. “The ability to have an aerial view of situations before ground crews arrive is huge.”
A SkyRyse helicopter with police aboard responded to a report of a man riding a dirt bike and brandishing a gun, for instance. It was able to give ground-response units detailed information about his movements and location so the officers didn’t have to confront him blind.
The technology is constantly evolving as SkyRyse collects large amounts of information about each flight. Its initial focus is on customers like Tracy — cities, counties and states that want to fly first responders to emergencies.
SkyRyse helicopters cannot yet transport injured people. There’s room to retrofit the copters for that, but the company hasn’t yet decided if it will do so.
Backed by $25 million from the likes of Venrock and Stanford, SkyRyse’s headquarters is the Hayward hangar, part of which is devoted to typical startup workbenches for engineers, while the rest is occupied by helicopters. The company currently has 20 employees but plans to triple its size within a year.
Eventually, SkyRyse wants to join the rush to autonomous helicopters.
“If you reduce the cognitive load on the pilot enough, one day you may get to a point where you don’t need a pilot,” Groden said. The biggest barriers to self-flying aircraft are regulations and people’s perceptions, he said — and SkyRyse plans to be ready once those barriers are overcome.
The long-term plan is to help people get around.
“Transportation is a more acute problem as cities get more dense and the infrastructure is taxed,” Groden said. “Commute times in the Bay Area are crazy.”