Yamaha's all-new Fazer

Yamaha has unveiled the ‘Fazer’, its latest industrial-use unmanned helicopter. The new model is powered by a fuel-injected, four-stroke, horizontally opposed twin-cylinder engine, and gains 50 per cent more payload capacity than the current model.

There are approximately 2500 Yamaha “R-50” and “RMAX” series unmanned helicopters now in use in agriculture throughout Japan, contributing to labour-saving and making farm work more efficient. The Fazer will help in realising the Japanese government’s “aggressive agricultural policy” while also serving as the main product for developing the company’s UMS (Unmanned System) business into a variety of new areas of use and expanding it globally – a goal outlined in Yamaha’s new medium-term management plan that began in 2013.

In Japan, the industrial-use unmanned helicopter was originally developed in the mid-1980s for the purpose of improving the methods of spraying crops with agrichemicals like pesticides.

Yamaha industrial-use unmanned helicopters are remote controlled and capable of being flown freely through the air to dust crops with agrichemicals or sow seeds over broad expanses of farmland or terraced rice paddies in the hills.

They can be outfitted with specialized equipment to enable them to fly autonomously along pre-determined courses and can also perform non-agricultural tasks such as aerial filming/photography or data gathering with sensory equipment – such as in Fukushima Prefecture after the 2011 tsunami measuring radiation levels.

In 2011, the helicopters were introduced into Australia, where they have been put to use in weed extermination on massive outback stations, mining sites, on dam walls, around high voltage power lines and more.

Yamaha is known for its land and water-based products, but if you trace back the company’s roots the connection to products for the sky is actually older than both of these.

During World War II, Nippon Gakki, Co., Ltd. (the then parent company of Yamaha) was commissioned to manufacture wooden propellers for trainer aircraft. The “YA-1,” the first Yamaha motorcycle and the product that prompted the founding of Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., was actually manufactured using the same machining equipment that had been used for manufacturing propellers and had stood idle since the end of the war years.

The catalyst to the birth of Yamaha Motor’s industrial-use unmanned helicopters was a commission in 1983 from the Japan Agricultural Aviation Association to develop a remote control aircraft capable of performing aerial (airborne) spraying of agrichemicals.

In 1986, the prototype “R-50” unmanned helicopter was unveiled, powered by an 11hp, 100cc engine from a Yamaha racing kart.

Meanwhile, in other Yamaha news, the company has finished construction of a new test circuit called Kikukawa, situated in Shizuoka.

The new addition is Yamaha’s fifth test circuit with a track length of 1.9km housed within a 490,000 m2 land mass. Featuring mountain and multi-purpose roads, the circuit has been created for developing new motorcycle platforms. Yamaha is planning for a second-stage construction in 2019, which will include the extension of the circuit.