Aerial Cargo Robot (Cargo UAV)

Abstract

Safety is the most important factor in the civil use of aerial robots. Research on aerial cargo robots, also known as cargo unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) started in 2004. The first ACR prototype flight was made on November 22, 2005. The ACR prototype consists of a flexible airfoil, twin microturbojet engines and a gravity center (GC) controller. The ACR meets the following four safety requirements: (i) touchability, i.e., without propellers or rotors, (ii) the low sink rate of a parachute, i.e., below 1.0 m/s, (iii) low stall speed, i.e., <30 km/h, (iv) a redundancy arrangement control. The most important safety specification of all is infallibility in ACR service applications.