Thanks for watching, it's been great to learn about a technology that is both mature and new in two different applications. Don't forget to get started in Onshape for FREE: Onshape.pro/Ziroth​ - You won't regret giving it a try!

My parents owned a small passengership that was sailing on the rhine that had a VSP system from 1936. It was one of the very first production VSP in the world. It ran for 70 years before it finaly broke down and we could not get the parts anymore.

Thank you for mentioning the downsides of cycloidal rotor propellers as well

When I was a small boy back in the 1950s I was given a small, cheap plastic toy aircraft that had horizontal rotating wings. I don’t think it had any power, source you just threw it and it glided a bit with the wings autorotating . I'd forgotten all about this little toy of nearly 70 years ago until I saw this upload. Thanks for the memory!😊

Another minor benefit is that having a horizontal rotation axis makes it easier to balance torque with a variety of rotor configurations.

"I have to wonder if it offers any practical advantages" uhh yeah man, me too. That's why I watched the video. Little disappointed you didn't answer that question.

I’m glad there are still people with the vision to say ‘I know we have a system that works but I want to try a different approach’ this is what we need to advance. Also when you commented on the quieter operation you didn’t mention military applications, I would think they would be the bigger backer of this.

I've never wanted flying cars, or if I did, I grew out of it fast enough to not remember. I've worked in insurance investigations, and know all too well how people drive cars that stay on the ground. Flying car accidents will be next level... EDIT: People saying that helicopters and private planes are like flying cars, no. No they are not. A helo-pilot in Canada has to pass four exams, get a medical certificate, have 40 hours of ground training and 45 of flight training, just to get a license. requirements aren't much different to be a fixed-wing pilot. A driver's license doesn't require school. You have to pass a vision test, a test on knowledge of traffic laws/signs, and pass a road-test.

"Yeah, but, aside from Safety, Efficiency, and Operational Versatility... What has the Voith Schneider Propeller ever done for us!"

I love the idea for propulsion and steering on an airship. These mounted on a gymbal to transit from horizontal for lift and propulsion to vertical for steering and propulsion. Brilliant! The flying car is a stupid idea. It always has been. Most people can't drive on the ground; try texting and flying. Forget to put this on the charger and you aren't walking home or pushing it to the nearest charging station when the power cuts.

Ah hey its the video on Voith-Schneider mentioned in the comments of the previous propeller video! So cool to see someone covering cycloidal rotors and discussing the applications in both marine, airspace and renewables! With renewables, a future video topic may be wind turbine designs? Aside from the typical horizontal axis three blade wind turbines you find everywhere, there's a lot of companies trying to find new ways of doing things. There's a lot of work trying to make small-scale wind, but in large scale as well. Particularly in offshore floating wind a lot of unusual large scale designs have been proposed, since it is the an immature industry that needs cost reductions and radical thinking the most

I love onshape and refer many people to it as an experienced solid works user slash engineer. I also worked for Voith and yes the schneider propellar opened my eyes when we installed two on tug boats for navy in simons town south africa. I also got to play with the simulator . it was fun

One of the best information channals i know of without diving too deep into the topic.

I enjoy these ziroth explainers! Good science content with the boring stuff trimmed out. Excellent!

A difficulty I can see with a working VSP system for flight is there are more moving parts and greater scope for failure. It is one thing for a ship to fail, but quite another thing for an aircraft in the air.

Thanks for explaining this technology. I learned more than I ever knew about marine propulsion using cycloidal propellers. Love your sense of humor.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="534">8:54</a> *that dude has nerves of STEEL*

I was inside Dr. Keletch's rotor ( probably spelt wrong) back in the 80's two weeks before he attempted a flight. Eye witnesses said it got off the ground about a foot before before the attempt was stopped. The design had a propeller at each end of an elongated egg shaped fuselage with T mounted horizontal blades at the end of each blade of the propellers.

I played around with this design decades ago, back when the materials for making a flying version of it were not available. I ended up making a desktop fan and stopped at that.

it's so cool to see this. I had a problem a while back and kept thinking of a design like this to solve it. It is nice to see that something like what I was thinking actually works

Very interesting design and thanks for the cool introductory video to all the key concepts at play here. I wasn't aware of these kinds of rotors/propellers before.

My kids and I love your videos! You're a librarian of genius ideas, engineering, and emerging technologies! Cheers!😀

They need an exterior brace to reduce the need to "suspend" the spinning blades freely. It will also provide better potential air-control. Blades can actually be setup to "pull in" on all blades, and direct air outward for turning, through holes in the exterior braces.

Man, love your content. Always appreciate the deep dive, research and the mentions on drawbacks or questions yet to be fully answered. There's one Engineering topic that would tremendously help you understand and then maybe convey to your audience why some of those promising technologies take so much longer to even start to get adopted. It's called Dependability Analysis (gross english translation) or Sûreté de Fonctionnement in it's original French as this originally stemmed from the french Military Nuclear and then Aviation programs that were under a certain level of Secrecy post World War 2 (and based, off course, on a ton of previous work from many more origins civilian & military alike). It's the engineering task of assessing how and why any partial-system can fail and then how the greater complete system would respond, which safenets or redundancies can or should be put in place to ensure the system can still function and/or safely recover. Here if just one of the four cycloidal propellers fails, the whole unit falls down and crashes minimum safe net would be the addition of a parachute. On the jetson craft if one of the 8 motors fail, the 7 others can compensate to ensure a slow descent. If up to 4 of them fail but with each on separate boom, almost same thing. if 2 of the motors from the same boom do, you can shut down all others to initiate a descent with the blades on autorotation. Recovery is still possible. You'd descent a bit faster but still hopefully in non-lifethreatening fashion. On a classic plane all engines can completely fail (which they rarely do) and you can still glide down to safety. One very good exemple of that Dependability topic and it's application was what happened with the Tupolev copy of the Concorde that was actually flown before the Concorde but crashed miserably. Russian spies had managed to steal the Concorde frame plans and had it built in a very short time just to "win the race". The engineers of the Concorde in France and of Bristol Engines in the UK, through their own xp and with the help of those Dependability/SDF thorough analysis had become the best experts in the world at managing vibrations, especially those caused by the engines. They perfectly knew which frequencies had to be favored and which others had to be eliminated at all costs (through materials, designs adjustments, dampening featurs etc) for the whole frame to be able to endure not only the flight constraints from the exterior on supersonic endeavours but also all the inner constraints caused by the very powerful engines themselves. The russian engineers did not possess such fine knowledge, know-how and assessments and that's why their frame shattered on the first presentation flight which ended in a disaster crash.

lol. i wasn't thinking of using it to trim hedges or lose an arm as potential usages when i saw the Jetson One, but it does look cool :) to each their own!

Sitting on my boat watching, wow, would love something like this, mine is sea going as well as rivers and larger canals here in the UK.

Good point about the noise reduction. In ocean going ships, propellor noise has been identified as a factor that is causing harm to cetaceans, who use sound to navigate and to hunt.

Decades ago, I handled the Navy's two Voith Schneider Water Tractors (little 1,000-hp bathtub toys -- but they served very well in the Philly Shipyard!) I also got to check out Foss Tug in Seattle, which had some stellar VSWT's (BIG-engine tugs!) Fantastic for moving ships and barges, and delightful fun to handle!

so your telling me, the goose plane chap was onto something. Crazy stuff. Great video as usual ziroth!

All I know is that if the first commercial flight using this technology is done by Boeing, I don't want to be on it.

Enjoyed this video, no hype just everyday down to earth explanation, wish I could do that.

Also the "Graf Zepelin" germanys only aircraft carrier which was never completed , was also equiped with such propeller atop of conventional ones!

riverboat airship GET! i want one of those amazon zeppelins with this out the back

Cool overview video, saw a few cyclos I built in there!

You are one smart kid. I love to see young "science nerds" do well. Your presentation was well researched and explained. Stay curious. One new subbie for you.

Hello. This is John Wall, from Sacramento, CA. Just intelligent and beautiful technology!! Bravo !! Well done, and I look forward to seeing major advancements in order for sales to the public 👍 Thanks again!!

THESE ARE USED ON LITERALLY MOST NEW TUG BOATS. REALLY TRANSFER THE POWER TO THE WATER ZIROTH. 😀😀😀😀

Thanks clear speech good research ten minutes ideal

An excellent and informative presentation. Thank you!

Watching tugboats with this drive system work really shows their power. When they turn sideways and start pulling back on the rope, that's impressive.

where is the 200% thrust part?

Would like to see more about this in renewable energy

The necessary materials science and control technology to making CycloRotors work are here. Check out the Hover Flight Dynamics for the new Bell V-280 Valor. Despite the small rotor size and huge power, Bell successfully developed full cyclic control of each rotor blade to maintain stable hover. If anything, the CycloRotor would be easier to scale, and given the strength and light weight of the V-280 blades, free-tip airfoils may be possible as well. As with the ABB Dynafin system.

For me, the most obvious downside of that design for aviation is the lack of lift in case of an engine failure. A helicopter retains the ability for autoration, which in many (most?) cases provides enough lift for an emergency landing and a plane still has wings. What would happen with a cycloidal propeller?

Seems like they would be very vulnerable to bird strikes or icing issues if used on a plane!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="568">9:28</a> "Flying cars have been a childhood dream..." in the 60s they taught us that flying cars were a sure thing by 2000! :D

This is an amazing tech, seen you I feel sure it will eventually become a viable air car in some fashion, perhaps as an eventual emergency vehicle for tight spaces.

I'm going to be the one... ;0) The plural of 'aircraft' is also 'aircraft' because 'craft' is a collective term. Incoming in 3 ,2, 1...

When I was 16 I came up with a design to use rotating drums with lifting surfaces installed that generated lift and thrust economically and was installed at the leading edge of the wings in a recessed form so the air flow would still have a modified laminar flow then thrust outlets were mounted towards the rear of the wing in small pods. This would generate enough thrust for shorter take off speeds as well as being able to generate more flow over the wing generating lift and the engine could shift thrust amounts between thrust and lift generation as it transitioned from takeoff to max forward thrust as needed. I’m not saying it functions as a VTOL design, just a more compact design that can support different structure configurations allowing new designs and allow for more power.

an idea I've always been fond of is a static attack angle Darrieus style turbine. The static angle of attack provides a lift vector in combination with torque. The idea is to have a horizontally rotating structure that can lift itself in steady wind. This concept works as a two line kite that would for sure destroy itself upon crashing, landing at a minimum would be treacherous. Perhaps an expanded PP type design that holds together until it explodes could save the parts and reduce danger, but the idea of a metal spinning death kite is pretty awesome.

This reminds me of a thing we used to do as kids. If you take a ruler (wood is probably best) and hold it horizontally with your thumb on the bottom and fingers on top, then throw it forward while pulling back quickly on the top bit as you let it go to make it spin "backwards" fast then it will fly across the room like a paper airplane. Different physics than cycloidal propellers but intriguing. I would have thought the downwards force would equal the upwards in my example but it does work.

15 years of development, and they've only been able to fly an empty carbon fiber frame with minimal battery capacity? Somehow I doubt they're on the verge of making a reliable man-rated craft. Aside from less rotor noise (normal propellers can also be optimized for noise), and lateral thrust vectoring (not that normal 4-rotor drones are lacking maneuverability), I'm not seeing many advantages here. There are several safety disadvantages (namely, if you lose power for any reason, you'll plummet to your death rather than having the autorotation capabilities of a normal propeller).

It may be efficient, but my eyes hurt when I look at those.

Love the humour at the end, cutting hedges and losing an arm 😆

In Naval engineering school we were shown a film about a Tugboat modified with cycloidal propulsion. That was 1970. Haven't heard anything about it until now

not going to fly... no pun intented

Too many moving parts, too little area.

I read, some years ago, that this tech was being used in some tugboats. It's power and directional capabilities were well above the standard screw-propeller with rudder layout

Having 2x playback speed is a great option for videos where you only need to get the gist of the subject to benefit from it.

Can we let go of the "flying car" concept? It's a terrible idea and always has been

Did you ever notice when a content creator with a severely limited vocabulary posts a video, the subject is always "INSANE"? So far I have seen posts about insane garbage cans, car designs, street signs, refrigerators, haircuts, bicycle propulsion systems, spacecraft, A/C power distribution, semi-automatic side arms, telescopes, cameras, vinyl record pressing, flashlights, seed planters, farm irrigation creepers, rain forest canopies, shoes, the statues on Easter Island, the design of the Pentagon, an ant colony, and everything else. I wouldn't suppose that the determining criteria for something to be "insane" isn't flailing it's arms, making over-animated gestures or being a danger to his or her self and the public.

Lots of friction for air use, yet. But, still quieter. Thanks for the content!

Great video. I'd never heard of them Very interesting. Cheers

always a pleasure to watch. excellent presentation .

These innovations will likely, one day in the not too distant future, revolutionize small boat racing. Incredibly exciting. Thank you

Thank you. It finally makes sense to me why windmills mounted on high towers are less efficient and in high winds - self destructive compared to Cycloidal Properllers.

Really interesting video ! Thank you for sharing !

At <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="500">8:20</a> you say they don't create vortices and loud noises from the rapidly moving tips Any airfoil with a tip creates a vortex, as the medium spills from the high-pressure side to the low-pressure side To control that tip inefficiency some screws (marine) and propellers (aircraft) rotate inside tubes or ducts, and some wings have winglets on the tips And that's why some of your cycloidal demo clips show solid discs at both ends of the wings or a skid beneath the tugboat: as a fence to stop that vortex generation (The skid also protects the device from damage when it strikes the bottom of the harbor) But you were right about the noise, since a large diameter propeller's tips can move so fast they feature transonic flow, resulting in sonic booms A cycloidal propeller's wing uses the same airfoil profile across its entire span, rather than varying thickness and angle of attack along its length from hub to tip

Use them as cycloidal propellors for VTOL then "feather" them into horizontal position to act as regular airfoils in a craft propelled by the thrust from a turbojet. The turbine could even have a power take-off to spin the cycloids when they're being used in VTOL mode. Whether that's any more efficient than alternative technologies that accomplish the same thing is the question that needs to be answered, but something like that is likely the best way to solve power to weight ratio issues.

good video. the uniform speed of the cyclo-rotor blade would mean they would never have issues of retreating blade stall like a conventional Helicopter. which also means they should be functional up to the speed of sound with out much trouble as well. very interesting.

I remember seeing a video of this technology from that German or Austrian company developing drones based on these like 5 years ago and being astounded by how compact they were. In the intervening time I kept looking for examples of the technology being commercialized and nothing had come up. The original video also disappeared off the internet. I literally thought that it had been surreptitiously classified and scrubbed off the internet (yes, bit tinfoil hatty) or something like that, given how obviously useful and how much potential the technology seems to have.

Just seeing the opening design it reminds me of a discussion with another engineer about autorotation in helicopters. (He's electric and mechanical, my focus was thermodynamics in ME while I continued to lean toward aerodynamics best I could at a school that didn't have those courses). I have some flight training completed, and I brought up the difference in "propellers" and the type of "blades" that rotary aircraft have, basically a wing that spins. This is an interesting application of that, but I worry about the added number of moving parts. (Then I remember adjustable pitch etc... on existing aircraft)

I could see these being a possible solution to having smaller scale wind turbines. Very cool.

One major advantage not listed is even if it doesn't fly so great, I can use it as a backup combine harvester for my corn.

With conventional propellers you tilt in the drection of travel. It looks like you'd be able to control direction and attitude almost completely independantly with a cyclorotor. You could accelerate while remaining flat and level or you could hover while looking at the ground. very cool

As a general rule of thumb a helicopter/drone needs 2 times the lift necessary to hover. That way it can climb at a reasonable rate, and if it runs into a heavy wind it can still operate as it won't be overpowered by the wind and unable to choose its own direction. The worst winds are the downdrafts where the wind is literally moving straight down, toward a collision with the ground.

in a way "I see" a similarity in rotor aircraft and a swash plate and/or collective-pitch. "I can see" how they could switch to rudders in maratime conditions with props for efficient propulsion over distance.

Compared to a regular propeller, they have several disadvantages: 1. They ONLY generate LIFT DURING HALF THE ROTATION. 2. They don't have the huge surface area that generates lift. 3. In order to generate the same lift, there must be many of them which create an unnecessary complexity. 4. They obscure the vision of the pilot, which in a war situation is extremely dangerous. 5. Common propellers can be designed to be maximally efficient. A fun thing, but that's all it ends up being.

A side reference to complete your history on propeller driven airplanes that flew. Alberto Santos-Dumont, self-stylized as Alberto Santos=Dumont,[1] (20 July 1873 - 23 July 1932) was a Brazilian aeronaut, sportsman, inventor,[2][3] and one of the few people to have contributed significantly to the early development of both lighter-than-air and heavier-than-air aircraft. The heir of a wealthy family of coffee producers, he dedicated himself to aeronautical study and experimentation in Paris, where he spent most of his adult life. He designed, built, and flew the first powered airships and won the Deutsch prize [pt] in 1901, when he flew around the Eiffel Tower in his airship No. 6, becoming one of the most famous people in the world in the early 20th century.[4][5] Santos-Dumont then progressed to powered heavier-than-air machines and on 23 October 1906 flew about 60 metres at a height of two to three metres with the fixed-wing 14-bis (also dubbed the Oiseau de proie-"bird of prey") at the Bagatelle Gamefield in Paris, taking off unassisted by an external launch system. On 12 November in front of a crowd, he flew 220 metres at a height of six metres. These were the first heavier-than-air flights certified by the Aeroclub of France, the first such flights officially witnessed by an aeronautics recordkeeping body,[6][7] and the first of their kind recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.[6][8][9] Santos-Dumont is a national hero in Brazil, where it is popularly held that he preceded the Wright brothers in demonstrating a practical aeroplane.[10][11] Numerous roads, plazas, schools, monuments, and airports there are dedicated to him, and his name is inscribed on the Tancredo Neves Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom. He was a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1931 until his suicide in 1932.

I think this holds more promise in wind generators. They would have a great structural advantage because of supporting the blades at both ends. Plus, the lower speeds make it easier om the mechanism.

Back in the early 70's before the Cleddau bridge was built in Milford Haven, the ferry known as the Cleddau King was fitted with voith-shneider props. It was a double ended boat and was very manoeuvrable.

These seem virtually useless for flight, but I can see they are quite useful for maritime applications. Thrust vectoring for drone aircraft is simply done by tilting the aircraft, which allows an aircraft with a set of four rigid propellers to vector its thrust any (useful) direction it wants. Tilting the drone causes the forces on it to always pull an occupant be towards the drone's bottom, which makes the flight quite comfortable even if you are accelerating. The ability to further vector the thrust such that forces on the occupant of the drone would not pull them towards the bottom of the craft is really not useful for anything. For maritime applications however, where you don't want to or can't let the ship rotate, the ability to vector thrust in any direction is indeed quite useful.

I used to repair Voith Schneider propeller (VSP) Tugs in Africa. the maneuverability is crazy. Perfekt for Tugs

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="640">10:40</a> one thing I immediately see that might be a benefit of the cyclorotor over a regular propeller, is that in the event of spontaneous, unscheduled disassembly, the pilot and any bystander who isn't immediately ahead or behind isn't within the "blend zone." You could obviously protect the pilot by moving conventional props up, but any thrust vectoring puts you right back in the crosshairs unless they are REALLY high, and still doesn't protect bystanders.

An obvious advantage of a four cyclorotor craft is that the outer hubs of the rotors could have tires on them and also serve as wheels. It could drive along the ground when not flying.

Well done

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="170">2:50</a> Can these be retracted vertically into the hull?

What is being done to counter the gyroscopic effect of the cycloidal rotor propellers? some kind of mixing unit like on helicopters or.....?

Hey Dude, love your shows. Can you do one on the Volelrian propulsion system please ? Keep up the great work. ❤

That propeller would be great for blending smoothies 😊

At 30 seconds in, you mention the Russian engineer E.P. Sverchkov, who created his "Samoljot." That term is a transliteration of the Russian word for airplane, "самолёт." It is pronounced "samolYOTE." Whoever transliterated the word used a "j" to indicate the "y" sound in the third syllable. Russians are very practical when naming things. The first satellite to orbit the Earth was named "Sputnik 1." "Спутник" (pronounced "SPOOTneek") is the Russian word for satellite. Your video was fascinating, well researched, and well written and presented. Thanks. This is the first I've heard of this technology.

Spinning a pair of semi flexible wings around a hub so that they fly in place and controlling the angle of attack cyclically and collectively for altitude and directional control is a good way to do vertical lift. And on top of that the bigger you make it the more efficient it gets, unlike the competing solutions. And it's mechanically simpler than the competing solutions. That's the reason we settled on helicopters for this sort of thing. That's also why helicopters like the Mi26 and CH-47 can exist, the bigger and slower the rotor the more efficient it gets at generating vertical lift. An Erickson Aircrane's turboshaft has about the same watts output as an F35B's engine but it can lift 11,000 lbs in addition to it's own weight while the F35B in VTOL can just barely lift itself and needs a rolling start when fully loaded. EDIT this also one reason why we don't have full scale multirotors, a single large slow rotor is more efficient than 4 smaller faster ones. Full scale also requires use of constant rate variable pitch props (you can't really control thrust by RPM unless it's an electric system, turboshafts, piston engines or variable speed gearing systems would be too slow) and you end up with a machine that is more complex than a helicopter while also being less efficient at vertical lift. They actually built something like this in the 1950's called the Curtiss-Wright VZ-7, it used a central turboshaft engine connected by shafts to four variable pitch props and was stabilized by a three axis mechanical gyro system. It was said to be very easy to fly but it was mechanically more complex than a helicopter while also being less efficient and the program never progressed past a one man prototype.

I think you've done very well.

Thanks for the through video.

What’s the lift/drag ratio like for your propellor? During the cycle the wing or hydrofoil loading is variable so the propellor will always be shedding a vortex street. This equates to high entropy production and high drag. Maybe the propellor has useful specialist applications, but I would not expect it to be generally useful.

Hey, it's a little late now, but you may get a kick out of the Cyclocrane, produced by Aerolift out of Tillamook, Oregon, USA in the early 1980s. My grandfather invented a rotating blimp that was a lighter-than-air cycloidal rotor. It was a beautiful machine that tragically failed, but there is a bit of information online and some youtube videos my dad uploaded relatively recently.

Explanation start around <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="360">6:00</a>

I would think the US Navy might look at these for submarine applications. A propulsion system where you don't have cavitation would be advantageous. I'm sure it has already been analyzed.

I remember 30 years ago Graupner was selling an RC model tugboat with Voith Schneider propellers

They look like a great contender for blades with tubicles that increase efficiency