It's sometimes strange how connections emerge when you research for a new article. Today I was looking through recently filed patents in regards to lighter than air and I stumbled over the following patent (WO/2009/046554) HOT AIR AIRSHIP flipping through it and reading the patent (in German Language) I wanted to see if I could find out more about this idea, see if there was already more information available on the web, so I did a quick search for the company mentioned in the patent iii solutions, the website is all flash so I can not link to a specific page. If you look into Current Projects you are greeted by a familiar sight, the Flying Stingray built by prospective concepts that we had featured in our Article called "Airships are just like fish in the sky". We will come back to prospective concepts in a minute but first I want to make the connection to the patent, in the current projects is an item called Hot-airships a click on it reveals a picture that looks very similar to the one found in the patent, it's the picture we also feature in this post. So why is iii solutions using the prospective concepts Stingray, well because it's the follow on company. On the prospective concepts website you can read:
In the aeronautical projects segment, tasks are to be undertaken in future which call for a different corporate structure with a stronger focus on project-specific issues. The decision was therefore taken to set up a new company to handle these projects under the sole management of Andreas Reinhard: iii-solutions GmbH.
Another connection that emerged during the research is the connection of prospective concepts to the pneumatics company Festo which I talked about yesterday, but I assure you that this really pure coincidence and wasn't planned. Festo and prospective concepts have worked together in project focusing on “Use of air” and “Movement in the air”.
I am including the patent below, which wont be of much use if you are not able to read German. Since there is currently no official English translation, I prepared these links to the auto translated Description and Claims. What do you think of the patent and the claims? Post your feed back in the comments or start a discussion in the forum, I would love to hear from you. (WO/2009/046554) HOT AIR AIRSHIP
Mr Alan Handley from Varialift Airships just published a press release stating that the Patent for his Varialift concept has been granted, we would like to congratulate him on this achievement. We are also looking forward to the demonstration of the proof of concept that is planned from April 2009 onwards. You can contact Mr Handley via alan at varialift dot com to register to get a formal notice of this event 30 days before it happens. For Reference below the full text of the Press Release and after that the European granted patent as well as the US Patent application. Also check out the Links at the Bottom of this post for our previous posts about Varialift
Varialift Airships
Mr A Handley is pleased to announce that protection of the Intellectual Property in the Varialift concept has been assured by the grant of the European Patent No 1591356.
Proof of concept.
The development and build of the proof of concept continues and it is hoped that a demonstration will be given in the coming year 2009 from April onwards.
All parties who may be interested in seeing the demonstration may register by email to alan at varialift dot com, Formal notices will be sent out giving the date and time and venue 30 days prior to any demonstration.
Thanks to Cnet i found the Patent that Pete Jess filed, you can read it here at the WIPO website. We have also included the PDF of the International Patent Application below. It's interesting to see the different look of the aircraft in the patent versus the artists impression seen on the Skyhook website. I am sure the final version will again look a little bit different. To read more about the Skyhook concept please read our article on it here as well as our follow up on the heavy lift rotorcraft concept. If you like what you read please spread the word and subscribe to Airshipworld. Tell your friends and colleagues about the Blog and help us to reach an even broader audience.
Today we want move a bit away from our hot air coverage before coming back to it, in the following days. There is a new hybrid airship concept in the works. It has won an innovation price in 2006(in German) from a German science TV show called "Welt der Wunder" and uses a lenticular envelope, with two non directional wings which will rotate to provide vertical take of and landing abilities. Csaba Singer from the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR) held a presentation about the Project at the DGLR Workshop X in Munich mid June 2007. Csaba Singer made the presentation slides available for download, so if you didn't have a chance to catch it back then you can now take a look at them. Also there has been a German patent application which can be seen at the DEPATISnet Website of the German patent office, it provides more diagrams and details than the presentation. There are also two videos available on YouTube. This first one is a computer animated video showing how the airship could work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIFhNzJZxzo
The second video shows a model prototype of the airship performing different maneuvers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmUcpEJys_Y Right now Csaba Singer and the DLR are looking for Students wanting to write their master thesis on the project. If you are a student and interested in this, please go to the Website of the DLR and read the description of the topic. Or contact Csaba Singer at the DLR under: Csaba Singer German Aerospace Center Institute of Technical Thermodynamics, Solar Research Stuttgart - Germany Tel.: +49 711 6862-490 Fax: +49 711 6862-747
What do you think about the project, will it be successful? Will it have scaling issues? Has there been something similar that has been developed, or patented? Tell us what you think leave your comments or write us an email. It's another ambitious project that we will keep an eye on. Make sure to checkout the English Hybrid-Airplane Website or German Hybrid-Flugzeug Website.
Keith Kothmann recently provided information about his new lenticular Airship called The Kothmann. He filed a patent for it and is currently working on building his first prototype. The United States Patent 6648272 can be read at freepatentsonline.com or you can download the PDF directly here if you don't want to read through the patent, read on since we are going to give you a little overview. The first and most noteable fact about the Kothmann Concept is the cost, compared to other airships today the project cost is estimated with less than 500,000 $ for the prototype. All of the airships components are current off the shelf technology according to it's constructor to keep the cost low and the speed of development high. The Flying Saucer shaped airship will be controlled by a variable lift technology that compresses the helium used for aero static lift when wanting to land, which reduces the neccesary ground crew. The same variable lift system can be used to trim the ship inflight to changing conditions. Due to it's design, the Airship can be stacked together with others, for heavy lift operations. To achive this the Kothmann Airship is equipped with a central cable that links the airships, and all airships would be contributing their maximum lift to the cable, on which the cargo would be transported. These are just some of the many interesting ideas behind this new Concept, even more detail can be obtained in a paper that Keith provided. It's a detailed description of the concept and a bit easier to read than the patent. Get it here: The Kothmann - Paper [PDF] Please leave your comments, what do you think about it, would you like to get more information about it, do you have questions? We are going to bring you more information as it becomes available.
News about the Varialift Concept reach us from the Airshipworld Yahoogroup. This week a discussion about the validity of Mr Alan Handleys claims on his Varilift Website started. His filed patent for the Varialift Technology was also mentioned, and the interested reader can get the PDF from pat2pdf. In this dicussion it was doubted that he was actually able to build it and was rather going to run with the investment money. What do you think ? Does the patent sound valid, is Mr Handley trustworthy? Should we doubt innovators and mistrust them, or should we rather try to build trust and thus avoid doubt? We are one industry and everyone of us tries his her best to bring airships back to the mainstream and we can only reach this goal if we work together worldwide.
