Boeing building a jumbo drone

It can transport 226 kg, 66% of its own weight of 339 kg.

 

At the Paris Air Show last summer, Boeing’s development head Mike Sinnett described the great future potential of unmanned cargo operations in remote regions. Now the US aviation and aerospace corporation has delivered.

 

Boeing presented the prototype of its new freight drone, called the unmanned cargo air vehicle (CAV), on 10 January. It weighs 747 lb. This makes even a layman think first of Boeing’s most famous aeroplane­, the B747 Jumbo Jet – but the diffe­rences between the two are rather immense, of course.

 

The B747 is more than 76 m long (compared to 4.6 m for the drone), over 68 m wide (5.5 m) and about 19.4 m high (1.2 m). A more impressive drone fact is that it can transport 226 kg, 66% of its own weight of 339 kg. Boeing’s largest freighter can carry 137 t, which only corresponds to 44% of its own weight when empty.

 

 

Quickly ready for unmanned flights

 

“We have an opportunity to really change air transport, and we’ll look back on this day as a major step in that journey.” It is easy to understand why Boeing’s chief technology officer Greg Hyslop feels that the event was rather historic. Boeing’s engineers and technicians designed and built the prototype in less than three months, carrying out its first tests at Boeing’s research and technology unit’s so-called collaborative autonomous systems laboratory in Missouri, which was opened in 2016. This stage has now appa­rently been completed successfully.

 

Boeing researchers will now use the prototype as a flying test bed. The corporation is aiming to further develop and mature the building blocks of its autonomous and electric propulsion programmes. It did not reveal many more details of the CAV’s performance, such as its potential range or the power of its battery pack. Read more

 

 

Source: ITJ

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