The Diamond Hero is an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...

under development by

Diamond Aircraft Industries Diamond Aircraft Industries is a Chinese-owned manufacturer of general aviation aircraft and motor gliders, based in Austria. It is the third largest manufacturer of aircraft for the general aviation sector, and has manufacturing facilities i ...

and introduced at the Aero show held in

Friedrichshafen Friedrichshafen ( or ; Low Alemannic: ''Hafe'' or ''Fridrichshafe'') is a city on the northern shoreline of Lake Constance (the ''Bodensee'') in Southern Germany, near the borders of both Switzerland and Austria. It is the district capital (''Kre ...

in April 2012. The aircraft builds on Diamond's experience building airborne sensor systems based on the

Diamond DA42 The Diamond DA42 Twin Star is a four seat, twin engine, propeller-driven airplane developed and manufactured by the People's Republic of China, Chinese-owned, Austria-based company Diamond Aircraft Industries. It was Diamond's first twin engin ...

Design and development

The aircraft was designed to be an autonomous UAV that incorporates

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

and will be able to exercise its own flight judgment. For instance, in the event of an engine failure, the aircraft will be able to examine the terrain below it and pick the best location for an autorotational landing. Diamond Aircraft CEO Christian Dries said of the aircraft on 19 April 2012, "it's a little bit beyond a regular unmanned aircraft." The aircraft is powered by two

Austro Engine AE55 Austro may refer to: * Austro-, a prefix denoting Austria * Austro (automobile), an Austrian cyclecar manufactured 1913–1914 * Austro Engine, an aircraft engine manufacturer * Ēostre or *Austrō, a Proto-Germanic goddess widely associated with ...

rotary engine The rotary engine is an early type of internal combustion engine, usually designed with an odd number of cylinders per row in a radial configuration. The engine's crankshaft remained stationary in operation, while the entire crankcase and i ...

s and will be able to lift a sensor payload for 6.5 hours of flight endurance or four hours of hover endurance. It also has a recovery parachute.

Specifications (Hero)

References

External links

Interview with Diamond Aircraft CEO Christian Dries about the Hero project
Unmanned aerial vehicles of Austria Wankel-engined helicopters Diamond aircraft Unmanned helicopters Proposed aircraft of Austria Aircraft first flown in 2012 {{UAV-stub