Another recent accomplishment with the Helicopter version of Arducopter was this full auto speed run which achieved a top speed of 30 m/s or 108 km/h.  This was done using Arducopter 3.2 which features improvements to the helicopter flight dynamics code, as well as Spline Waypoints which is a general Arducopter feature.  Spline-Nav really helps helicopter flight as it avoid jerking the helicopter  which is very important at high speeds.

108 km/h in auto mode is a good accomplishment given that the absolute maximum speed this helicopter is capable of is 140 km/h, before Retreating Blade Stall threatens.  This performance wasn’t a fluke either, twp back-to-back runs are shown in the video, and in fact this mission was run 10 times while preparing to shoot the video.

For reference this is a relatively small helicopter, a Trex 500, which weighs only 2100g and is 90cm long.