The Elroy Air Cargo is an unmanned
cargo aircraft developed by American startup company Elroy Air, intended to replace land
delivery trucks on inefficient routes with
unmanned aircraft
An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller ...
.
History
The San Francisco-based company was founded in November 2016 by David Merrill, CEO and Clint Cope, VP engineering. Elroy Air initially pursued the
electric aircraft
An electric aircraft is an aircraft powered by electricity.
Electric aircraft are seen as a way to reduce the environmental effects of aviation, providing zero emissions and quieter flights.
Electricity may be supplied by a variety of methods, ...
VTOL
air taxi market, but turned to autonomous cargo aircraft to avoid the complications of passenger-carrying certification. In December 2017, the company secured
US$
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
4.6 million of
seed funding, led by aerial mobility investor Levitate Capital.
[
By early 2018, a full-scale prototype had been tested at Half Moon Bay Airport, south of San Francisco. Its lift system—rotors, motors and controllers—was rigged on a truck-based testbed to verify the aerodynamic lift produced and the ]aircraft noise
Aircraft noise pollution refers to noise produced by aircraft in flight that has been associated with several negative stress-mediated health effects, from sleep disorders to cardiovascular ones. Governments have enacted extensive controls that a ...
levels for urban operations. In early 2018 a subscale prototype was under construction to validate the aerodynamics and controls, with ground testing planned in early March 2018 and first flight by late March. The full-scale aircraft was forecast to be flown by late summer 2018.
Design
The tandem-wing QAC Quickie Q2
A tandem wing is a wing configuration in which a flying craft or animal has two or more sets of wings set one behind another. All the wings contribute to lift.
The tandem wing is distinct from the biplane in which the wings are s ...
design employed in the air cargo role has a pusher propeller for forward flight, six propellers under twin booms for vertical lift and a pod to carry 150 lb (68 kg) of cargo under the central fuselage. The hybrid electric powertrain has variable-pitch rotors with a large diameter to turn more slowly, for redundancy and to reduce noise. Its 150 mile (240 km) operational radius is optimized for express delivery. Ground robots are planned to be employed for ground handling and one pilot would be responsible for an entire aircraft fleet.[
]
Specifications
References
Further reading
*
*
External links
* {{official website, http://www.elroyair.com/
United States cargo aircraft
Proposed aircraft of the United States