Yesterday (January 25th), cargo drone manufacturer, MightyFly, hosted an unveiling event of its new Cento autonomous third-generation aircraft to its investors, partners, potential customers and government representatives at the company’s HQ in San Leandro, CA, reports a press release. This included several stationary demonstrations.
The latest MF100 eVTOL can carry one hundred pounds of cargo for six hundred miles and has several new technical characteristics. They include:-
¬ A larger cargo bay.
¬ A bi-wing design to enable a large trim of the aircraft centre of lift.
¬ The use of structural conductors to increase reliability and reduce weight.
¬ A composite structure to increase payload capacity by reducing structural weight.
¬ A modular design to optimise maintenance.
¬ The use of the canard as landing gear to lower drag and drive efficiency.
The new eVTOL also presents “improved operational efficiency through MightyFly’s Autonomous Load Mastering System (ALMS) component, which will enable the aircraft to autonomously open and close its cargo bay door, receive and eject packages into and from the cargo bay opening, move and secure packages in the cargo bay via an internal positioning and locking system, and sense and compute weight and balance,” explains the release.
All of these tasks can be done autonomously, without requiring an operator to reposition the packages inside the aircraft. This helps to minimise the ground operation.
Manal Habib, co-Founder and CEO of MightyFly, commented, “We are very excited to unveil the 2024 Cento that couples innovation with efficiency in design, maintenance, and operation, bringing to the world the key to transform the expedited logistics market.” She continued, “MightyFly’s new eVTOL will revolutionise industries such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare, and will transform life in rural and remote areas.”
The release continues, “The eVTOL is currently working with Agility Prime and Air Mobility Command in the development of the ALMS feature to solve the U.S. Air Force’s most pressing autonomous aerial logistics needs.”
And continues, “Additionally, the MightyFly’s third generation aircraft has been designed to accommodate a relatively large range of payloads’ centre of gravity, which allows for a high degree of variance in cargo contents, densities, constitutions, loading order, and tie-down positions. This design attribute is expected to be a key technology differentiator for the Cento platform and its utility to be extremely valuable and competitive in the market. “
The aircraft’s cargo bay is significantly larger than its second generation predecessor. This allows the delivery of larger packages and goods, including the traditional cooler boxes used to transport donor organs for transplantation and blood bags. It also benefits additional use cases and businesses in the industries of logistics, manufacturing, healthcare, pharmaceutical, retail, automotive, and oil and gas, as well as organisations performing humanitarian and disaster relief work, and government’s defence teams executing various logistics and resupply missions.
The event also included a presentation by one of MightyFly’s investors, Tim Draper, Founding Partner of Draper Associates, who talked of the great potential of the third-generation Cento.
He remarked, “The vehicle you see today is a testimony of MightyFly’s talent, creativity, innovation, and decades of industry expertise. This technology will help save lives and solve painful logistics needs of businesses around the globe.”
Manal Habib (Credit — VFS photo by Kenneth I. Swartz)
MightyFly concluded production of this new aircraft in early January 2024 and will begin its qualification trials in February, which include a test plan previously followed for its predecessor aircraft.
In the fall of 2024, the company will publicly debut its autonomous cargo aircraft delivery flights in Michigan, demonstrating point-to-point autonomous delivery use cases to partners and potential customers.
MightyFly is also scheduled to demonstrate its autonomous loading, unloading, and balancing of packages capability to the U.S. Air Force in early 2025 to include additional Proof of Concept programs.
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