ELSA, Villinger Sign MOU “to Develop Advanced Cargo Drones”

Roma­nia-based, ELSA Indus­try and Aus­tri­an com­pa­ny, Villinger, announced this week the sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing (MOU) to col­lab­o­rate on the devel­op­ment of inno­v­a­tive car­go drones, reports a press release. The agree­ment aims to com­bine the exper­tise of both com­pa­nies to advance the field of autonomous aer­i­al logis­tics.

The part­ners will joint­ly work to imple­ment ice pro­tec­tion and light­ning pro­tec­tion sys­tems in ELSA’s VTOL car­go drone. The release explains, “This mod­u­lar, remote­ly oper­at­ed, and bat­tery-elec­tric pow­ered drone, made of com­pos­ites with fold­ing wings, is designed for BVLOS (Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight) oper­a­tions.” And con­tin­ues, “ELSA’s car­go drone plat­form also fea­tures inter­change­able pow­er­train options, includ­ing bat­tery-elec­tric, tur­bo-elec­tric and hydro­gen-elec­tric sys­tems.

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Katrin Mayrhofer, COO and co-Founder of ELSA Indus­try, remarked, “Villinger is a renowned engi­neer­ing firm that has been serv­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try for over 30 years, with a focus on devel­op­ing supe­ri­or ice pro­tec­tion, light­ning pro­tec­tion and heat­ing sys­tems. Their exper­tise will be invalu­able as we work to advance our car­go drone tech­nol­o­gy.”

Markus Villinger, CEO of Villinger, added, “This part­ner­ship aligns with our vision of enabling large-scale imple­men­ta­tion of autonomous car­go drones. By address­ing exist­ing chal­lenges and lever­ag­ing the lat­est advance­ments in AI and autonomous sys­tems, we believe we can unlock the full poten­tial of this tech­nol­o­gy to trans­form logis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion net­works.”

The MoU estab­lish­es a frame­work for the par­ties to work togeth­er in a coop­er­a­tive and coor­di­nat­ed effort, while main­tain­ing the flex­i­bil­i­ty to engage with oth­er enti­ties when required.

Katrin Mayrhofer

ELSA’s VTOL Car­go drone is char­ac­terised by a unique fea­ture: oper­a­tion in pow­er gen­er­a­tor mode.

In a sce­nario in which fast deploy­ment of a pow­er source is required dur­ing a dis­as­ter, its drone can be quick­ly dis­patched to the affect­ed area, land on rough ter­rain and quick­ly start pro­duc­ing elec­tric­i­ty. The pow­er gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty is 90 kW.

The time of pow­er pro­duc­tion varies, depend­ing on the select­ed ener­getic mod­ule and the type of fuel (ener­gy source):

Bat­ter­ies: 45 min­utes.

Kerosene: 7.3 hours.

Hydro­gen: 6.1 hours.

An Out­put Pow­er < 90 kW (part load) can sub­stan­tial­ly increase the oper­a­tion time.

Cristinel Patrascu, co-Founder and CEO of ELSA, com­ment­ed, “We are excit­ed to part­ner with Villinger to push the bound­aries of car­go drone tech­nol­o­gy. By com­bin­ing our strengths, we aim to pro­vide a rev­o­lu­tion­ary solu­tion for mer­chan­dise trans­porta­tion, improv­ing mobil­i­ty with safe, sus­tain­able, and cost-com­pet­i­tive elec­tric air ser­vices.”

Back­ground

Villinger, found­ed by Dr. Thomas and Doris Villinger, spe­cialis­es in the devel­op­ment of cut­ting-edge tech­nolo­gies for the aero­space and trans­porta­tion sec­tors. With a strong focus on inno­va­tion and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to dri­ving progress in the field of autonomous aer­i­al sys­tems.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.elsaindustry.eu/

www.villinger.co

(Top image: ELSA’s VTOL Car­go Drone)

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