Aerial Transport

A drone for aerial transport of heavy poles.

Vision

Problem

Today’s aerial transportation is done by helicopters, to which the cargo is attached by ropes. This operation can be very dangerous for people on the ground, who are often needed to guide the swinging load to its final position.

Vision

We believe, that in the future such dangerous tasks will be done safely without human interaction by using a drone. This drone will be autonomous and capable of picking and placing a load by rigidly connecting to it.

Goal

With our focus project we aim to explore the future of aerial transportation, by implementing a novel approach to drone design. In a first iteration the drone will be optimized for grasping and precisely positioning long vertical payloads like masts or poles, which pose a particular challenge for such a system. Later, we plan to extend the drone’s transportation capabilities to many different shapes.

Partners

Our Project is hosted by the Autonomous Systems Lab and supervised by Prof. Dr. Roland Siegwart.

Hosted by

Research Partner

Prototypes

Atlas

As a first prototype we developed Atlas, to prove the concept of our perpendicular propeller setup and learn valuable lessons to later improved while developing Boreas. Atlas will not be able to lift any loads, but it was built merely as our first testing platform. We built it out of easily accessible and cheap materials, like aluminum and wood. In March we successfully flew with Atlas for the first time, which was a big achievement for us. Through a lot of testing, we were able to improve the Atlas flight stability and accuracy to ± 2 centimeters.

3d View

Boreas

Boreas is our second prototype and will be able to lift and place poles with a weight of up to three kilograms. Like Atlas, Boreas has a perpendicular propeller setup with four thrust props and four auxiliary ones. In a demonstration, we want to showcase Boreas capabilities by stacking two poles on top of each other. For updates on our progress please follow us on Instagram or LinkedIn…

3D View

Team

We are a team of eight highly motivated engineering students in their final bachelor’s year, supported by coaches from the Autonomous Systems Lab at ETH Zurich and supervised by Prof. Dr. Roland Siegwart.