Company A2Z Launches “Gen 2 Longtail”, an Upgraded Ready-to-Fly Commercial Delivery Drone

U.S‑based com­pa­ny, A2Z, is launch­ing its sec­ond gen­er­a­tion RDST Long­tail inte­grat­ed car­go drone, reports a press release. It fea­tures a fac­to­ry-inte­grat­ed RS2 drone winch enabling pay­loads to be safe­ly low­ered from high alti­tude. 

The Long­tail hexa­copter design is avail­able in two forms:- 

: A stan­dard con­fig­u­ra­tion offer­ing a 20 km max­i­mum range. 

: A rain­proof pre­mi­um ver­sion with bat­tery quick-release sys­tem offer­ing a max­i­mum range of 26 km. 

The Long­tail is able to auto-release the ship­pers’ own box­es with­out the need for a recip­i­ent to be on site to receive the pay­load. The drone’s all-new bag auto-release mech­a­nism allows for easy pick­ups and final deliv­ery.

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This offers drone ser­vice providers and logis­tics oper­a­tors an off-the-shelf, ready-to-fly UAV for last mile trans­porta­tion. Car­ry­ing or retriev­ing pay­loads up to 5 kg over a dis­tance of 11 km, the RDST Long­tail “is the ide­al deliv­ery drone for local par­cel or food deliv­ery, emer­gency med­ical deliv­er­ies, drone-born water sam­pling pro­grams, off­shore logis­tics, search and res­cue oper­a­tions, open mines, solar farms and more,” explains the release. 

Designed to meet the 55-pound FAA max take­off weight require­ment, the RDST Long­tail “is remote ID com­pli­ant with a fac­to­ry-inte­grat­ed remote ID bea­con. Ready to fly through inclement weath­er, the RDST Long­tail Pre­mi­um edi­tion opens new use cas­es to the ben­e­fits of drone deliv­ery, and its quick-release bat­tery sys­tem gets flights back in the air quick­ly to lim­it down­time.”

This lat­est addi­tion con­tin­ues the company’s focus on address­ing con­sumer-pro­tec­tion con­cerns with grow­ing res­i­den­tial drone deliv­er­ies. By con­duct­ing such deliv­ery from alti­tude, any prob­lems con­cern­ing the rotors are mit­i­gat­ed along­side pri­va­cy con­cerns and intru­sive noise, as well as safe­ty from high trees, pow­er lines and build­ings.

A2Z Drone Deliv­ery Launch­es RDSX Pel­i­can Hybrid VTOL

Aaron Zhang, Founder and CEO of A2Z Drone Deliv­ery, com­ment­ed, “In upgrad­ing our off-the-shelf RDST plat­form, we’ve stream­lined the over­all design and upgrad­ed the propul­sion sys­tem; but the most sought-after upgrade from cus­tomers has been the rain­proof­ing, allow­ing busi­ness­es of any kind to quick­ly and eas­i­ly launch a drone logis­tics oper­a­tion from deliv­er­ing parts to off­shore ener­gy plat­forms, to deploy­ing live-sav­ing med­ical equip­ment to first respon­ders right on scene.” 

Both mod­els offer a large car­go bay that can accept pack­ages up to 45L x 45W x 35H cm giv­ing oper­a­tors pay­load flex­i­bil­i­ty. The release explains, “Oper­a­tors will also appre­ci­ate the intu­itive A2Z Ground Con­trol Sta­tion (A2Z QGC) which inte­grates flight and winch com­mands with air­frame teleme­try for accu­rate nav­i­ga­tion and deliv­ery. The inte­grat­ed open-source Q Ground Con­trol mis­sion plan­ning soft­ware is capa­ble of con­duct­ing pre-planned auto­mat­ed deliv­ery mis­sions with­out need­ing to land.”

Zhang con­tin­ued, “Our pro­to­type RDST Long­tail has already logged 500 flight hours con­duct­ing dai­ly res­i­den­tial par­cel deliv­er­ies near our Ground Zero Test Facil­i­ty out­side Shang­hai, Chi­na. Many of the upgrades includ­ed in this sec­ond gen­er­a­tion RDST have been made in response to cus­tomer feed­back on capa­bil­i­ties they need to deploy for mis­sions in inclement weath­er, and the plat­form has proven robust dur­ing test­ing in rain con­di­tions.” 

RDST Long­tail Pre­mi­um Mod­el 

: RDS2 Deliv­ery Winch with Rain Cov­er – Upgrad­ed rain pro­tec­tion for up to medi­um rain.

: Extend­ed Radio Range – Up to 30 km unob­struct­ed trans­mis­sion range.

: Cus­tom Bat­tery – 30,000mAh 12S.

: Quick-Release Bat­tery Tray – Eas­i­ly swap fresh bat­ter­ies to lim­it down­time between deliv­er­ies.

: Max Range – 26 km with no pay­load.

: Posi­tion­ing – Cen­time­tre-lev­el RTK for extra pre­ci­sion dur­ing flight and deliv­ery.

: Glass Fibre Exte­ri­or Cov­er – Light­weight and rain­proof in up to medi­um rain.

: The Pre­mi­um Mod­el costs USD27,000, USD7,000 more than the stan­dard.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.a2zdronedelivery.com/

(Pics: A2Z Drone Deliv­ery)