DB Schenker announced that its partner Volocopter has conducted the first successful public flight of VoloDrone, its electric heavy-lift drone. The flight involved an end-to-end cargo demonstration and was during the ITS World Congress 2021 in Hamburg.
DB Schenker reported that the public flight demonstrates how drone operations can extend the existing logistics infrastructure for land or sea transport to create entirely new supply chains and transport routes. Vice President of Global Innovation Erik Wirsing commented: “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”.
The VoloDrone is an unscrewed, fully electric utility drone designed to carry any of the six International Organization for Standardization pallet sizes, weighing up to 200kg, over a 40km range. The aircraft has been designed to serve challenging missions across diverse industries. It is hoped that the VoloDrone can be deployed to areas where conventional transport options are limited.
Volocopter is organizing the physical and digital infrastructure to support these services, which are set to launch in the next 2-3 years. VoloIQ, the drone’s digital platform, looks to support ecosystem aspects like Approved Maintenance Organisation, Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation, Flight Analytics, Vehicle Connectivity, Autonomous Operations, and more.
DB Schenker stated that the VoloDrone will help the company to rethink global supply chains whilst also saving emissions.
Source: DB Schenker
