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Volocopter’s VoloDrone completes successful first public flight at ITS Congress in Hamburg

Volocopter’s elec­tric heavy-lift drone Volo­Drone has con­duct­ed its first pub­lic flight, with a demon­stra­tion at ITS Con­gress in Ham­burg this week.

Togeth­er with the inter­na­tion­al logis­tics leader DB Schenker, Volo­copter demon­strat­ed VoloDrone’s seam­less inte­gra­tion into the logis­tics sup­ply chain with an end-to-end car­go trans­port demon­stra­tion. The three-minute flight took off at home­PORT Ham­burg and reached a max­i­mum alti­tude of 22 metres.

For the deliv­ery sim­u­la­tion, the drone was equipped with a load-box in between its land­ing gear. A Euro-pal­let sized load was secured, with the air­craft trans­port­ing the pay­load to a DB Schenker Car­go Bike and land­ing safe­ly. Once the pay­load was trans­ferred suc­cess­ful­ly, the Car­go Bike deliv­ered its car­go to the final des­ti­na­tion under the area’s park deck.

Flo­ri­an Reuter, Volo­copter CEO, said: “This first pub­lic Volo­Drone flight is a strong sign for Volocopter´s lead­ing posi­tion in the UAM indus­try. We are the only com­pa­ny offer­ing solu­tions for pas­sen­gers and goods that are fly­ing ful­ly scaled and pub­licly around the world.

“Our Volo­Drone will make exist­ing logis­tics process­es more robust, effi­cient, and sus­tain­able. DB Schenker is an invalu­able part­ner in our endeav­or to untap the mas­sive poten­tial of our VoloDrone’s logis­tics use cas­es.” 

The demon­stra­tion in Ham­burg builds upon the foun­da­tions of the sta­t­ic proof of con­cept (PoC) the part­ners con­duct­ed in July this year in Stuttgart. It laid out a blue­print of how to imple­ment Volo­Drone oper­a­tions in logis­tics facil­i­ties glob­al­ly.

With the first pub­lic flight of the Volo­Drone, in Ham­burg, Volo­copter and DB Schenker demon­strat­ed how drone oper­a­tions can extend the exist­ing logis­tics infra­struc­ture for land or sea trans­port to cre­ate entire­ly new sup­ply chains and trans­port routes.

Erik Wirs­ing, Vice Pres­i­dent Glob­al Inno­va­tion at DB Schenker, said: “With the Volo­Drone flight today, we were able to pub­licly demon­strate our suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion and the impres­sive progress on DB Schenker’s inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty roadmap for clean­er logis­tics.

“Volo­copter has proven again that they are the ide­al part­ner for DB Schenker’s ambi­tion to rethink glob­al sup­ply chains and bring trans­port logis­tics to the next dimen­sion for our cus­tomers while sav­ing emis­sions.” 

The Volo­Drone is an unmanned, ful­ly elec­tric util­i­ty drone designed to car­ry any of the six Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion for Stan­dard­iza­tion (ISO) pal­let sizes, weigh­ing up to 200 kilo­grams, over a 40km range. The drone itself is 9.15 meters in diam­e­ter, 2.15 meters tall, and has a 600kg max­i­mum take-off weight (MTOW).

As one mem­ber of Volocopter’s robust UAM air­craft port­fo­lio, which includes its VoloC­i­ty and Volo­Con­nect for trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers, the com­pa­ny is also organ­is­ing the phys­i­cal (Volo­Ports) and dig­i­tal (VoloIQ) infra­struc­ture to sup­port these ser­vices, which are set to launch in the next 2–3 years.

VoloIQ serves as the dig­i­tal back­bone for oper­a­tions. This plat­form will sup­port ecosys­tem aspects like Approved Main­te­nance Organ­i­sa­tion (AMO), Con­tin­u­ing Air­wor­thi­ness Man­age­ment Organ­i­sa­tion (CAMO), Flight Ana­lyt­ics, Vehi­cle Con­nec­tiv­i­ty and Autonomous Oper­a­tions.

The VoloDrone’s first flight took place in 2019. Since then, reg­u­lar flight tests have been con­duct­ed at var­i­ous air­fields in Ger­many. Future Volo­Drone oper­a­tions will be ful­ly elec­tric with autonomous beyond visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) capa­bil­i­ties.  

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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