Two manned multirotor helicopter-like flights -- Kitty Hawk Flyer seen in San Francisco

Multi-rotor aircraft are related to those "Drone" devices making all those fantastic aerial movies. Except, they use quite a few more motors and propellers, and in some cases they carry passengers. Electric manned flight is happening, and it may happen faster than we expect.

We have two aircraft to report on today. The first, the Kitty Hawk Flyer, got a lot of overly hyped attention back in April. In this video we see one flying not in the overly scripted scenario of their advertising footage, but along the San Francisco waterfront. For previous coverage, see Kitty Hawk Flyer - electric powered quad-copter electric motorcycle thingymajob

The second is a gentleman with a german accent flying a vehicle in a forest, presumably on his own property. He recently posted a video showing the first flight of his multi-rotor design, and today's video shows a tuning test-flight. He flew for 11 minutes achieving 80% depth of discharge, indicating more flight time than the previous video. For previous coverage see Very cool Manned multirotor helicopter-like -First Flight!