Airbus Helicopters’ unmanned air vehicle, Skyways, successfully completed its first flight demonstration at the National University of Singapore yesterday.
The drone took off from a maintenance centre and landed on the roof of a specially designed parcel station, where a parcel was loaded via a robotic arm. The drone then took off and returned to land while automatically unloading the parcel.
“Today’s flight demonstration paves the way positively to our local trial service launch in coming months,” said Airbus Helicopters executive vice president of engineering and chief technical officer, Alain Flourens.
The Skyways project is currently in the research and development phase with various tests, such as this one, under way. The unmanned system will also be demonstrated during a trial service where campus students and staff can have parcels between 2 and 4 kilograms delivered to designated parcel stations on the university campus – which is the size of 150 football fields.
According to Airbus, the Skyways drone will be a fully autonomous octocopter that flies parcels in containers located on its underside along routes called ‘aerial corridors’ to and from designated stations where it is automatically loaded or unloaded. These “parcel stations” store the delivered parcels in lockers which a customer can then open at any time once receiving notification on their smartphone of the arrival of their package.
