Zipline has a neat new video that focuses on Platform 2, their new aerial platform for US consumer deliveries.
The platform consists of a small eVOTL that carries and even smaller delivery container on a wire. The small container has a small rotor to allow for hyper-local maneuvering. So there is an eVOTL with many rotors hovering and lowering on a tether a smaller container with a single rotor.
It looks super-cool and pretty complex.
Zipline has been around for quite a while now. They got their start delivering blood to far-flung hospitals in Africa. My understanding was that, for those missions, they used catapults to launch their fixed-wing drones into the air. That helped reduce the amount of battery mass the vehicles needed, since they didn’t need to carry batteries for takeoff.
I wonder whether the decision to go with a VOTL approach for their new Platform 2 comes from technical, regulatory, or business considerations.
David Silver 