Aerovel Corporation was founded by the designer of various unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for several companies over many years and who co-founded The Insitu Group in 1992, where he was the architect of Aerosonde, SeaScan and ScanEagle. The Aerovel Flexrotor represented the next evolution in a line of unmanned aerial systems designed for maritime and land-based operations, day and night, combining endurance and expeditionary capabilities. Requiring only a 20' by 20' area for launch and recovery, Flexrotor takes off and lands vertically (VTOL) before transitioning into horizontal wing-borne flight - flying entirely automatically after takeoff, with no pilot intervention needed. Quickly assembles for flight and rapidly re-stowed in its compact case for storage and transported on a small flatbed truck, the device can be used for weather monitoring, geological survey, and imaging reconnaissance. Having a flight endurance of more than 32 hours and a 100-kilometer communications range, the system is an all-weather aircraft that has operated in harsh conditions including off of various vessels in the Arctic and tropics. A fixed-wing aircraft, Aerovel Flexrotor requires no runway or launch and retrieval equipment. It is designed for observation, monitoring, intelligence gathering, communications relay, surveillance, reconnaissance, security and scientific data collection. It can be used for a diverse range of commercial, civil and military applications at sea and on land.
