Testing Air Taxis, Drones and More with NASA’s Multirotor Test Bed

NASA has developed a flexible way to test new designs for aircraft that use multiple rotors to fly. The Multirotor Test Bed, or MTB, will let researchers study a wide variety of rotor configurations for different vehicles, including tiltrotor aircraft, mid-sized drones and even air taxis planned for the coming era of air travel called Urban Air Mobility. This video shows the MTB set up in a four-rotor configuration during a recent demonstration inside the U.S. Army's 7- by 10-foot wind tunnel at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. While spinning, the rotors move between a forward, airplane-like orientation and an upward, helicopter-like one that can simulate vertical takeoff and hovering. The entire structure tilts, too, mimicking different orientations of an aircraft as it flies. To highlight this range of motion, the video is shown at 8x normal speed starting at 0:38.