“We said, ‘What if we build a Toyota Prius for the sky?’” Phan says, laughing. Phan and other MIT researchers took a shot at the problem by conceptualizing and designing microscale hybrid electric-gas engines for drones. In 2014, Robert Shin, head of the Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Tactical Systems Division at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, approached Phan and asked him to help solve the payload and endurance problems for drones. Phan’s research became a core of Phan and Sarma’s startup Essess, which deploys cars with thermal-imaging rooftop rigs that create heat maps of homes and buildings to detect energy leaks. In 2009, Phan’s former advisor Sanjay Sarma, now the Fred Fort Flowers and Daniel Fort Flowers Professor in Mechanical Engineering and vice president for open learning, asked him to enroll in a PhD program to work on wide area thermal imaging. Top Flight’s story began in the late 2000s, when Phan was recalled to MIT twice to solve different engineering problems - both times leading to startups. “By 2020, you may see a drone fly a person.” “With a 100-kilowatt hybrid electric engine, concepts like air taxis become viable,” he says. Top Flight’s technologies will make them more practical for hauling people from hub to hub. But, Phan says, these can stay airborne for only about 10 minutes. NASA, Uber, and many aerospace companies worldwide are currently working on building air taxis, small autonomous planes that will shuttle people around in big cities. With the hiring of several MIT alumni, the startup is quietly developing a 100-kilowatt hybrid drone that can lift 100 kilograms - enough to carry a human or two - for up to three hours. Flight control can operate in fully-or semi-autonomous modes. The onboard batteries never need recharging users just need to refill the gas tank and fly again. It uses gasoline to generate the power that drives the lift motors, keeps backup batteries charged, and powers onboard electronics including computing, sensors, and communications equipment. The engine weighs about 17 pounds and can generate up to 10 kilowatts of power. The drone can be customized for any number of industrial-strength applications. Top Flight’s drone can fly for more than 2.5 hours - enabling ranges of up to 100 miles - while carrying up to 20 pounds. Many drones run on batteries, flying for 15 to 30 minutes between charges, with maximum payloads of 5 pounds. “Using a high-energy-density energy source like gasoline, and converting it to electric power, and doing it efficiently, gives you the equivalent of a ‘super battery.’” That’s what petrol and gasoline gives you,” Phan says. “The key is having an abundance of power and total energy. As the startup continues to develop hybrid drone power sources, the technology could also pave the way for human flight. ![]() The drones offer an order-of-magnitude increase in range, payload size, and power over battery-powered counterparts.Ĭoming to market this fall, the hybrid drones could help make drone package-delivery a reality, and enhance capabilities for crop imaging, military surveillance, emergency response, and remote infrastructure inspection, among other applications. While working on Wall Street in the early 2000s, he became an early pioneer of the high-frequency trading system, which consists of powerful computers that rapidly complete tons of trading transactions.Īs co-founder, CEO, and chief technology officer of Top Flight Technologies, Phan is now one of the first entrepreneurs to commercialize hybrid gas-to-electric drones. In the mid-1990s, Phan helped build the Draper Small Autonomous Aerial Vehicle, the world’s first fully autonomous helicopter. ![]() MIT alumnus Long Phan SM ’99, PhD ’12 is a technology innovator and entrepreneur with several engineering “firsts” under his belt.
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