This futuristic and state-of-the-art “Silent Ventus” cargo drone, developed by Undefined Technologies, has just come up with a new flight test video of the updated model, and the most interesting thing to note here is that they have achieved the milestone of flying this drone for about four and a half minutes. The latest edition of this drone is all set to make its debut in 2024 and will ramp up its commercial operations as well. Not to mention, the drone works on the mechanism of “ionic propulsion” and, as per the company, these “silent” drones have finally achieved the mark of flying below a noise level of 75dB, which was previously set at 90dB for the “test drone”.
Coupled with this, you would be amazed to know that the technology is free from the use of propellers and can still fly. All thanks to the ionic propulsion that creates an “ionic wind” in order to generate a high-voltage electric field across the integrated electrode. This will ultimately give propulsion to the electrons by charging them positively through the ionization of oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air. However, thrust is created when these positively charged electrons have been given a downward push through an “ionic wind”.
As per the company, “The Air Tantrum technology yields higher levels of thrust, up to 150% compared to current ion thruster technologies.” It should be noted that Undefined Technologies first unveiled its “silent ion” drone in 2020 when it used to operate at 90dB of noise and could fly for around 25 seconds, which was depicted in the “test lab” video back then. However, the company achieved considerable progress when it became successful in giving around a two-and-a-half-minute flight to the drone, and that too at 85 dB of noise, earlier this year.
To that end, the company has finally scaled up the operational efficiency of the drone, and it can be seen in the video released recently in which it can fly for up to four minutes and a half, as discussed above. On the other hand, the company aims to achieve the level of noise for the drone set at less than 70 dB by 2023, for a whopping 15 minutes. Watch the video embedded below that has been released recently:
In response to the video, Thomas Benda Jr., who is the Undefined’s Lead Aerospace Engineer, said, “This 4+ minute flight required advances in the chemical composition of the batteries that can now provide us with higher energy densities. This improvement is part of our efforts to target lighter weights. “