[00:00:03] Robert Lunnie: That's hard to do. It is. Trying to get a model to transition from that vertical to that horizontal safely and reliability reliably and repeatedly is a lot of work. Yeah. So we're going to do that on a three foot model first.
[00:00:17] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios where former fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.
Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders and innovators of all types.
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Welcome to the Hangar Rack Studios podcast. We're live at Verticon and we are interviewing some incredible disruptors, innovators, industry leaders, and with that we have Robert Lunny on today. Robert, thank you for coming on the podcast.
[00:01:21] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
[00:01:22] John Ramstead: Now, we met up in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
You are part of University of North Dakota. You're a professor of aerospace up there, retired Air Force, nuclear background. But now you're doing a lot of work with drones and unmanned aerial systems and the aerodynamics. You have a team up there.
And it was interesting because we were talking to the people from XTI and I know that they have actually been working with you to develop subscale models and prototypes.
[00:01:47] Robert Lunnie: Yes.
[00:01:48] John Ramstead: That they can subsequently build and iterate so they can get more and more, more better. Gooder data is what my good friend Len calls this.
[00:01:58] Robert Lunnie: That's actually a technical term.
[00:01:59] John Ramstead: It's a very technical term. Yes.
But what we'd like to do is. Could you though talk about when you're actually taking a very mature drawing that's in a CAD cam system that XTI has for their Trifan and many other people here that are developing products. How do you take that and map that over to actually creating a subscale prototype?
[00:02:21] Robert Lunnie: That's a great question. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a couple different ways you can do it depending on if the CAD software, if we have access to that type of CAD software, we can pull right off of that and actually like 3D print a small model. We actually have already done that with xti. My crew just the other day had some time to kill and they thought they would make some cool stuff and they actually printed out about. I have to say maybe half a dozen to a dozen XTI Tri fans about this big with the motor, with the tilt fan in different configurations. So they're all over the office now. And we play around with them in the office and we have different colors and all kinds of cool stuff.
[00:02:55] John Ramstead: That's fantastic.
[00:02:56] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if we have access to that or if we don't, we actually can design our own using our own CAD software that we have. We use a company called Fusion360 and we can develop it, transfer it over, or just redo it on our software. And then from there again we could. We usually start with building a very small subscale model about this big. And we kind of keep that as inspiration. We have that as we're doing things. We can keep looking on, you know, what it's going to look like and try to envision that but bigger.
[00:03:24] John Ramstead: Now, how do you take that, the small model, which is fixed. Right. And then turn that into something that, you know, where the different part moves the way you want. The center of gravity is like. So you can actually have. Or is that kind of the first step? Like, first I'm going to test it and then.
Yeah, kind of tell me the process because it's fascinating to me for sure.
[00:03:43] Robert Lunnie: So for this model we're going to build, eventually it's going to be a six to eight foot subscale model.
[00:03:48] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:03:48] Robert Lunnie: But we're not going to start off with that. That's actually a pretty good sized aircraft, you know, smaller aircraft.
[00:03:53] John Ramstead: Yeah.
[00:03:54] Robert Lunnie: So what we're going to do is we're going to build about a three foot subscale model first. And we're going to. It's going to. It's going to be laid out very similar to the Trifan 300. It won't have a body on it at first. It'll be just a frame. So it might be just some aluminum, like square tubing, and you'll see that all the components are exposed. But we'll build that first and actually just get it to fly. We'll do, we'll do. We'll set up so I can go vertical so we can start testing the vertical capability of it. And then next we'll go into actually that transition where the motors are going to actually rotate over and go into horizontal flight. And that's, that's hard to do. It is trying to get a model to transition from that vertical to that horizontal safely and reliability reliably and repeatedly is a lot of work. Yeah. So we're going to do that. On a. On a three foot model first.
[00:04:38] John Ramstead: Now, a lot of drones now have. They have the fixed propeller. So the way that I go into forward flight is I'm going to probably rev the back ones higher and get into a different attitude. Right. That's kind of the way helicopter does. So how do you guys then take something, a propeller and articulate it?
[00:04:54] Robert Lunnie: Exactly. So there's very. The, the quad style, the quad rotor aircraft does that. Right. It's almost like your basic drone. You buy at Best Buy or whatever. You know, if you want to go forward, the rear props spin up a little bit faster, creates more lift and it just kind of, you know, moves forward and everything adjusts really quickly.
With the flight controller. But with the XTI model, with that, it's actually a rotating nacelle, like the motors are going to rotate themselves. So what we'll do is we'll do a vertical model first to get everything working out like I said. And then we'll try to try. We'll start working on the rotation of those nacelles to actually get that forward flight. And for us, we'll probably have just some servos that are connected and we'll run it through the flight controller and our ground control station to just start working on that transition phase to actually get it horizontal. And then once it's in horizontal, lift will come off the wing, which I always say. Lift off the wing is a wonderful thing. It's cheesy. I totally know. I'm going to put on a Valentine's card for all the pilots out there to give to their Valentine's.
[00:05:50] John Ramstead: You know, we might, I'm sure they might use that for their new tagline.
[00:05:54] Robert Lunnie: Lift off the wing is a wonderful, beautiful thing. Yeah. And so are you. You know, that's.
[00:05:58] John Ramstead: So are you. That'd be the Valentine's version, right?
[00:06:01] Robert Lunnie: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's how we're going to do it. We're going to do the 3 foot first and then we're also in concert with this, we're building a ground control station. So this is part that I really get excited about, is you can fly off the sticks, which we will, you know, when we're testing the prototype, but we're actually building a ground control station as well, which will have monitors in front, it'll have joysticks on the side and you'll be able to fly that aircraft from a seated position, like if you were in the aircraft. And I actually do research in this area myself at the University of North Dakota, where we built a small Subscale model with cameras in the front facing forward and then one facing down. And that information from the cameras gets fed into the video monitors. To actually fly it sitting like this, like you would actually be flying in the aircraft. That's what we're going to do with this one as well.
[00:06:48] John Ramstead: And talk a little bit about some of the capabilities that, you know, UND Aerospace, everybody knows it's one of the largest flight schools in the country. In the world.
[00:06:55] Robert Lunnie: Yeah.
[00:06:56] John Ramstead: And the simulator bays are incredible. But you guys have done a lot of R and D and actually developed that like in conjunction with Cirrus and Cessna. And what are some of the capabilities you guys have in kind of that area? Because that could map then into a flight control system for a vehicle like this.
[00:07:12] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, for sure. So Grand Forks, North Dakota, first off, when people walk by our booth over here, we, if you happen to see it, you saw like 100 airplanes and, you know, a bunch of helicopters, a bunch of drones. And people ask twice today so far. Is that CGI'd or is that Photoshopped? No, that's an actual picture of our fleet. We are the largest flight school in the country and we do a lot of operations, a lot of flights. So that's just. But that's just a small part of the ecosystem for drones and urban air mobility and advanced air mobility. We also have the Gorman Test center. We have the Rise, which is the research institute for autonomous systems.
We've got, like, I mentioned, like the test center.
We also have an incubator like the Hive, which is just for drone companies. So we have this enormous infrastructure.
[00:07:58] John Ramstead: How many companies are in the Hive right now? I think it's over 20, 25.
[00:08:01] Robert Lunnie: I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but that sounds like a pretty accurate number.
[00:08:04] John Ramstead: Yeah, it's a great ecosystem for everything. Uas, especially right there at the Hive.
[00:08:08] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, they have great coffee. They have cool.
Really, they have cool people. We really like. We go. We go there and we. We work. You know, we have an office working with XTI and that. That we're helping build their lab there. And then I also, for my company, have a small office there as well. But we literally go up there and just work. And it's a great. It's just a great vibe, you know, it really is. Like people there work hard, they want to push boundaries. I mean, that's what it's for, right, Is to foster that economic growth. And Grand Forks with drones.
[00:08:38] John Ramstead: Yeah, and talk a little bit too about the. You know, Gorman Field is kind of a Unique area to test, you know, prototypes like this. And then also you have great skies, which is actually up on the Air Force base.
[00:08:48] Robert Lunnie: Yep. Grand Sky.
[00:08:49] John Ramstead: Yep. Or Grand Sky. And there are some really unique elements to the airspace up there.
[00:08:54] Robert Lunnie: We do.
[00:08:54] John Ramstead: Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:08:55] Robert Lunnie: Yeah. So we have grand sky and the major tenants in grand sky are north of Grumman and General Atomics. They're attached to the air base and that's also attached to the ecosystem for testing as well. So companies can come up and they can rent space or use the facilities up there for also for testing.
[00:09:13] John Ramstead: It's open airspace. You can also get feedback from military radars, observability, ATC ads.
I mean there's just so many unique things about flying and testing up in that airspace that I think is kind of unique in the country.
[00:09:29] Robert Lunnie: It is, yeah. Some people call it like the Silicon Valley of drones, you know, really, because it really is such a robust ecosystem and once you start learning about what we have up there, it's like a no brainer to come up and do your development and testing and things like that. And there's large scale, like I said, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, big large corporations. And then you got the little guys and gals like me, you just, you know, you know, a few interns just kind of pumping out cool stuff and, and trying to push boundaries as much as we can.
[00:10:00] John Ramstead: Boy, isn't it Northrop that's refitting the, what is the Global Hawk, which is a drone the size of a 737. Huge.
[00:10:06] Robert Lunnie: Yes.
[00:10:07] John Ramstead: Down to, you know, small palm sized drones.
[00:10:09] Robert Lunnie: Right.
[00:10:09] John Ramstead: They got everything in between.
[00:10:11] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, exactly. They're retrofitting the Global Hawks up there. Yep. Yeah, they be called Rangehawks, Range Hawks from the up.
[00:10:17] John Ramstead: And a question for you. So from the small drone that you have printed out on your desk to the six foot drone that is now able to capture engineering data. Right. For the CFD systems for modeling to, you know, to take some real world data. And all other companies have used prototyping to, to be able to do this, to enhance their, their modeling. What, what is that? The timeline of a process like that, you think?
[00:10:41] Robert Lunnie: Oh gosh, that's a great question, John. It really, I think be vague, but it can vary. It really depends. You know that moving that from that vertical, that horizontal is, is a kind of, you know, with a, with a rotating nacelle is, is, is, is a feat. It's, it's not easy to do, but it could be, you know, six months, eight months it really depends on the project itself. But we're going to build the three foot subscale model and learn what we can from it. Everything we can. We're not super concerned about longevity, how long we can fly, things like that. We're learning about that vertical to horizontal transition.
[00:11:13] John Ramstead: You can just keep printing new parts.
[00:11:15] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, exactly.
[00:11:15] John Ramstead: Yeah, right.
[00:11:16] Robert Lunnie: Yeah. So we do rapid, yeah, rapid development with 3D printers which we have up there. And we build, we order a lot.
[00:11:22] John Ramstead: Of pretty large scale printers.
[00:11:24] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, we do have some pretty nice printers up there too. So, yeah, once we get that three foot model figured out and get that transition and everything set up, then we'll safely and comfortably move into a larger model which will look like the tri fan, which will have airfoils on it. And then we'll fly it, kind of fly it on the wing. We'll get up into that transition and we'll fly it around in the wing and then transition back and land. So.
[00:11:45] John Ramstead: So, you know, one question as we wrap up, so, because I'm curious about this is as an engineer. Oh yeah. How do you gather the data from the prototype, you know, and translate it so that it's data that, you know, the engineering can, you know, team can use for the, you know, for the real full size aircraft.
[00:12:01] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:02] John Ramstead: How do you do that?
[00:12:02] Robert Lunnie: So that's a great question. For our mission planning software, we can download all that data. We can download how much the, how much battery is being used. We can put sensors on it that'll get us our airspeeds. It tells basic information, airflows, all the power. Yep, yep. Power consumption and things like that. And we can just, we can do, you know, good just aviation too and just kind of like watch the aircraft fly, see how it acts like this. Good old school aviation as well.
[00:12:26] John Ramstead: So, Robbie, as soon as we get this first one flying, we need to have you back on the. Maybe we'll even come up there and we'll film out there at Gorman Field. I've been there once before.
[00:12:34] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, come in the summer.
[00:12:35] John Ramstead: It's kind of in the middle of nowhere. Yeah, you definitely want to come this summer. And man, just thank you so much for your time and just the work you and your team are doing.
[00:12:42] Robert Lunnie: Yeah, yeah. Super excited. Thank you very much, John. Appreciate it.
[00:12:45] John Ramstead: Fantastic. Thanks, Robbie.
[00:12:45] Robert Lunnie: Thank you.
