Don’t get too excited — this isn’t a drone most of our readers would ever be likely to purchase. But it does involve a pretty cool concept: a gas-powered onboard generator that creates electricity to run a drone.
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We first wrote about Yamaha and their agricultural or industrial drones when they were at CES2018 displaying the YMR-01. Today we learn that Yamaha will begin with limited sales of their industrial multi-rotor drone the YMR-08 aimed at agricultural use starting in June of this year in Japan.
Yamaha makes a lot more than motorbikes, outboard engines, and watercrafts. Apparently, they make drones now as well. At CES 2018, they were showing off a new drone, the YMR-01, for pesticide application in the agricultural industry. Since the nineties, Yamaha had been using the R-Max remote helicopter to do the same but a drone should be easier to fly and therefore offer a larger market for Yamaha to cater to.
The Yamaha YMR-01 features an interesting rotor design with six arms but eight rotors. The double rotors in the middle are called“vertical coaxial” rotors. Yamaha states that the design of the drone is to create the most effective downward air currents for optimal application of pesticides. Smart.
