Autonomous Tech: How the supply chain is going hands-free

Will bigger and slower win the race?

While Matternet is content to stay small, Natilus is looking to super-size the drone industry. Though it is currently working on a 30-foot prototype, California-based Natilus eventually wants to scale up to a drone that will rival the payload capacities of our largest freighters.

Co-founder and CEO Aleksey Matyushev (who will be speaking at Air Cargo World’s ELEVATE 2016 Conference in Miami on Oct. 10) said the full-size prototype will be about half the size of a 747, but will still be able to lift 100 tonnes of cargo and fly it from Los Angeles to Shanghai at 70 percent of the conventional cost.

The secret, he said, is to fly at slower speeds. “Drag is the square of velocity,” he explained. “So if you scale your speed from the usual Mach 0.74 back to Mach 0.4, you have a lot less drag. It’ll take you a longer time to get there, but it allows you to replace the standard turbofans with more efficient turboprops.”

Despite some intriguing artists’ renderings of a sleek, modified delta airframe, there are few details available about the full-scale aircraft. But by the second or third quarter of 2017, Matyushev said the 30-foot mock-up – which he said will be the rough equivalent of the size of a Predator drone used in the U.S. military, and will carry 700 pounds of cargo from Los Angeles to Hawaii, skimming about 80 feet above the water and flying at about 300 mph.

Curiously, this drone will only be able to take off and land on water, but Matyushev said the FAA regulations are the main reason. “There are so many hoops to jump through with the FAA, we decided to get into international waters, which is outside of FAA jurisdiction,” he explained. “When you think about it, it’s a crazy situation, but that’s what SpaceX did with their drone ship and the rocket.”

Coming into the first quarter of next year, Matyushev said he’ll have “a lot more confidence” in his future plans, which may involve a full scale test flight 2019. “We’re really focused on intercontinental routes now,” he said. “We’re not even interested in talking about domestic airfreight because of the bellyfreight overcapacity.”

And just in case the regulations change to drop the line-of-sight requirement, Matyushev said he’s “leaving room for landing gear” in the next aircraft.