aviation
Natilus cargo drone – 60 percent more transport volume through an innovative fuselage wing design
The hull is significantly wider than the traditional tubular design.
©PR
Natilus wants to revolutionize cargo transport and is working on a family of cargo drones. They don’t require a crew and thanks to the design, reminiscent of a flying wing, they can carry much more volume than a conventional aircraft.
Air freight is far faster than transport by rail or container ship, but it is also very expensive. The start-up Natilus promises to cut costs and the environmental impact by half. Two means are supposed to do this. For one, the Natilus N3.8T is a drone. A semi-autonomous, remote-controlled aircraft entails significantly lower personnel costs.
And then the drone has the shape of a manta ray, the fuselage is not a tube, but looks like a rolled-out ellipse in cross section, which merges with the wings, thereby increasing the cargo space. Natilus calls the design “Blended Wing Body”. The fuselage is made of carbon fiber and flows seamlessly into the wings. This shape incorporates some of the advantages of a flying wing design, like the larger lifting area, without being overly complicated. The drone still has tail units. Unlike military machines, it does not have to reduce the radar shadow.
Start with a small machine
The Natilus N3.8T is said to be the start-up’s first machine. With a maximum takeoff weight of 8,618 kilograms and a range of 1,667 kilometers, it can carry loads of up to 3,855 kilograms. So it’s a small cargo plane. Natilus claims that operating costs and carbon emissions per kilogram of cargo can be reduced by 50 percent compared to conventional air freight. The N3.8T can be described somewhat flatly as a cargo drone for the Amazon age. The “Blended Wing Body” changes the relationship between volume and weight. This is important for individual packages for end customers, which are packed very unfavorably from a logistical point of view. Often more air or filling material is transported in them than actual freight. That means: today a ton of parcel freight requires far more volume than in the past. The cargo hold of the drone is also designed for the dimensions of standard containers.
“From a cargo perspective, our design makes a lot of sense,” said Aleksey Matyushev, CEO and co-founder of Natilus. “It has 50 percent more internal volume, doubling the amount of revenue-generating cargo per flight. With traditional designs, volume runs out before you can maximize the aircraft’s takeoff weight.”
No passenger plane planned
A passenger version is not planned. But passengers would also benefit from the “blended wing body”. Currently, they are often packed painfully tightly together, more volume would allow for more spacious cabins. The twin-engine turboprop aircraft is remote-controlled and is initially intended to explicitly transport smaller packages in the USA. In a further step, larger cargo drones are to follow. Up to a model with a wingspan of 61 meters, which is slightly more than the Boeing 777 wide-bodied aircraft. However, due to the shape of the wings, the drone should be able to carry far more cargo.
Drone the size of a wide-bodied aircraft
The flagship is said to have a range of 8,220 kilometers. The start-up does not operate in free space. The company belongs to Volatus. The company is already in the cargo business, the new drones will initially work in its own fleet. In addition, there are already 400 pre-orders from other companies. The Natilus N3.8T is currently being tested in the wind tunnel, and series production is scheduled to begin in 2025.