I've commented on a couple of UTRC posts regarding the Sikorsky Cypher UAV picture featured in their 90 year anniversary. Here is a picture from my collection. This was taken in September 24 or 25 back in 1996 at a site owned by Martha Berry College in Rome, Georgia. This was at the conclusion of the Autonomous Scout Rotorcraft Testbed (ASRT) demonstration. From left to right is me (flight controls, airborne software, test pilot), Tony (?) & son from Lockheed Martin (route planner), Jim Cycon (program manager), Herb Otto from Westinghouse/ Northrup Grumman (automatic target recognizer), Dave Walsh (flight test), John Kronsnoble (flight test), Rich Gockenbach (mechanic), Jeff Rios (ground station software), Mark Lutian (programs). The ASRT mission had us take off, fly a route planned by clicking on a map, search for and track a person, fly home and land. This was all autonomous. We were way ahead of our time! All of my flight controls patents are since expired but you can see them in the drones that are flying today. The aircraft was powered by a Wankel single rotor engine made by UAV engines, which was a spin-off of the Triumph motorcycle company. In 30 year UTC career, this was the most fun I've had - and it was also hard.
Many at SIKORSKY recognize that the autonomy effort began with Cypher
I witnessed these flights.. a hugely successful project with a super team... sunk by stupidity and lack of vision at the top
Luis Anker
4y
That's really cool, Bryan! Kinda looks like the LIS jupiter-2 at 20th scale.
Brian Allen
4y
Absolutely incredible! This is the most innovative throwback I've ever witnessed. Thank you very much for sharing!
Vicki Conant
4y
thanks for sharing this!!!
Ian Glenday
4y
Long time involvement with Jim Cycon and Cypher. Too bad no one saw its immense value at the time.
Brings back memories of my intern assignment back in '92. Maybe Amazon would be interested?
Ashish Bagai
4y
@Bryan -- man -- there you are... all smiles :-) Very nice! Thanks for sharing! @Alan -- yeah -- and you burnt the panel too, now didn't you ;-)
Alan Coyne
4y
I helped build parts for the first couple Cyphers as an intern in 1992 in Lee Kaplan’s A/EDC Lab. Little did I know that would be part of the impetus to go to the Al Gessow Rotorcraft Center at Univ of Maryland and ~20 years at Sikorsky.
Belcan Propulsion Engineer at Sikorsky
4yRemember it well Layed out the position of the Wankel engine in preliminary design for Armond Amelio in the propulsion group when l was a designer in propulsion.