Elroy Air demonstrates autonomous cargo-handling capabilities of its Chaparral aircraft at Travis Air Force Base

Elroy Air has demon­strat­ed the autonomous ground nav­i­ga­tion and car­go-han­dling sys­tems of its Chap­ar­ral air­craft for Unit­ed States Air Force senior and exec­u­tive offi­cers, as part of the Gold­en Phoenix Tech­nol­o­gy Demon­stra­tion Event in Cal­i­for­nia.

Dur­ing the live demon­stra­tion, a devel­op­men­tal pro­to­type of the Chap­ar­ral aircraft’s ground sys­tems per­formed a series of autonomous manoeu­vres with­out the use of GPS, which can be unre­li­able or jammed in con­test­ed envi­ron­ments.

With­out inter­ven­tion from oper­a­tors, the vehi­cle locat­ed and nav­i­gat­ed autonomous­ly to a car­go pod inside a hangar from a dis­tance of 20 metres, then used its robot­ic grasp­ing mech­a­nism to pick the pod up and secure it to the under­side of the vehi­cle. The sys­tem then nav­i­gat­ed out of the hangar to the take­off zone.

Karl Pur­dy, Direc­tor of Fed­er­al Pro­grams at Elroy Air, said: “We are proud to part­ner with the Unit­ed States Air Force and be here today to demon­strate one small part of the Chaparral’s auton­o­my, and how it will improve mis­sion effi­cien­cy and air­man per­for­mance when oper­at­ing in a con­test­ed, GPS-denied envi­ron­ment.

“The Chaparral’s high lev­els of auton­o­my enable mul­ti-capa­ble Air­men to accom­plish tasks out­side of their core AF spe­cial­ty. Its scal­able logis­tics sup­port to tai­lorable force pack­ages enables friend­ly forces to exe­cute from mul­ti­ple, aus­tere oper­at­ing loca­tions.”

The Chap­ar­ral is a tran­si­tion­ing “lift + cruise” VTOL air­craft with a full car­bon com­pos­ite air­frame and a tur­bine-based hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train for long-range mis­sion capa­bil­i­ties. It was designed to fit in a ship­ping con­tain­er or C‑130 air­craft, enabling it to be quick­ly shipped and deployed to mis­sions any­where in the world.

Designed specif­i­cal­ly for logis­tics, Chap­ar­ral has unique capa­bil­i­ties for locat­ing, nav­i­gat­ing to, pick­ing up, and drop­ping off Elroy Air’s light­weight, aero­dy­nam­ic mod­u­lar car­go pods.

The pods are a core ele­ment in the Chap­ar­ral air­borne logis­tics sys­tem — they can be pre-loaded by ground per­son­nel and picked up by the aircraft’s robot­ic sys­tems before take­off. At the deliv­ery loca­tion, after the sys­tem has land­ed the car­go pod is low­ered to the ground and released.

Elroy Air is devel­op­ing indus­try-first autonomous air­craft sys­tems and soft­ware to expand the reach of express ship­ping to every per­son on the plan­et. Build­ing on the pow­er­train and per­cep­tion tech­nol­o­gy enabling the hybrid-elec­tric / autonomous vehi­cle rev­o­lu­tion, its VTOL aer­i­al logis­tics sys­tems can oper­ate out­side of air­port infra­struc­ture and evolve the pos­si­ble in com­mer­cial air car­go.

The company’s solu­tions will expand deliv­ery loca­tions and reduce time­frames, pro­vide imme­di­ate aid and relief in dis­as­ter and fire­fight­ing sit­u­a­tions, as well as rapid autonomous resup­ply for troops in the field.