A newly developed drone is offering a life-saving feature on the battlefield and emergency disaster situations. The Israel-based robotic company Tactical Robotics has carried out a demonstration for their main customer, which is the Israeli Defense Force. The demonstration for the IDF was done at Megiddo Airfield in the Galilee.
The Cormorant Drone carried a load of cargo through a pre-planned flight path and delivered the cargo load to a ground team. The team loaded a medical training dummy to simulate a casualty. Other than the unloading of cargo, the entire simulated mission was performed autonomously. The Cormorant enhances the potential of drone development for a wide range of military, civilian, and even industrial applications. It has caught the attention of drone fans all over the world for its distinctive appearance and functionality. The Cormorant has six-foot rotors underneath the aircraft. Tactical Robotics has called these the internal lift rotors.
The engine of the drone gives the Cormorant the ability to lift over 1000 pounds of cargo and two wounded people and can work in a mission range of 30 miles over 100 mph. In theory, it will be enough time and space to allow the military units to drop supplies to the front lines and bring the wounded soldiers back. The payload also doesn’t need any human pilots to operate the drone. Soldiers who will be transported to safety will be linked to a remote monitoring system. This will give ground medical teams to see the vital signs and talk to patients using a two-way communication system. The company explained in a statement, “The demonstration, a combination of cargo delivery and casualty evacuation, shows Cormorant’s unique dual-role capability as the only UAS recognized by NATO to fulfill both cargo delivery and CasEvac missions. As such, the aircraft is designed to exceed the standard reliability and handling qualities required of a typical, tactical UAS in order to meet the requirements to safely ferry human “cargo” back from the battlefield.”
The Cormorant is the most functional autonomous drone that can be used for tactical purposes. However, it is not the only one in production. There are many other companies who are working on similar ideas. AirSpaceX debuted its autonomous verticle take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft called the MOBi ONE. The company said that it wanted to save the US nearly $300 billion which are lost each year due to excessive fuel and production cost as a result of traffic jams and road delays. Another company Vahana, an automatic air taxi is also set to hit cities by 2020. The future will definitely have a lot of autonomous drones!