Vision of a Drone - Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery (ALAADy)

Unmanned cargo aircraft: researchers at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) are developing new technologies for safe, flexible and economical freight delivery. They are analyzing different aircraft and their potential for automation.

Within the project ALAADy (Automated Low Altitude Air Delivery), DLR is investigating automated and unmanned freight delivery. The flight in very low level altitudes below 500 feet with comparably large scale aircraft is especially innovative. Safety, technological feasibility and economical aspects are core elements of the project. Relevant applications are transportation of time critical cargo like replacement parts or humanitarian goods. For these applications, specialized aircraft concepts are designed to carry around one metric ton of payload and airspace integration is explored. Key components for safe operation and certification of drones are concepts recently published by EASA. Whether such an automatic transport system is safe and feasible using these new concepts is one of the main questions the researchers are studying. For this purpose the whole systems including its operation is analyzed within a realistic simulation environment. Additionally, a prototype based on a gyrocopter is developed to investigate aspects of the study in flight test.
http://www.dlr.de/ft/alaady