Issue 45 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Aug/Sept 2022 Tidewie USV Tupan | Performance monitoring | Bayonet 350 | UAVs insight | Xponential 2022 | ULPower UL350i and UL350iHPS | Elroy Air Chaparral | Gimbals | Clogworks Dark Matter

94 In operation | Elroy Air Chaparral and down once it’s been unscrewed, to keep it out of the way of the rotating wing. “These stowage factors also mean the Chaparral can be fitted inside a 40 ft standard shipping container, allowing our commercial and humanitarian customers to ship their vehicles anywhere in the world using standard transport, then rapidly set them up for flight.” At the moment, those customers include AYR Logistics, which plans to order up to 100 Chaparrals to improve its transportation of humanitarian supplies around the world on behalf of organisations such as the UN, the World Food Programme and various governmental bodies and NGOs. The US Air Force has also awarded Elroy Air a Tactical Funding Increase Award of $1.7 million in contract value alongside its existing Phase 3 SBIR contract. The new award is aimed at further developing the Chaparral’s deployment capabilities and CONOPS in collaboration with the USAF and Agility Prime, the USAF’s programme tasked with accelerating commercial eVTOL development. Overall, more than 900 Chaparrals have been requested by customers. Elroy plans to produce several UAVs next year, 10-20 the following year, then dozens to hundreds in the years following. Merrill comments, “It’s important to our production and scaling goals to remain largely a systems integrator, using COTS components wherever we can so that we don’t expend resources on reinventing the wheel for things like actuators, motors, engines and so on.” Cargo pick-up Elroy Air has developed several iterations of its cargo pod, as the Chaparral’s payload capabilities can be customised to meet the needs of different customer missions. The pod is a modular element of the Chaparral system, being designed for automated pick-up and drop-off by the vehicle, and to permit functional and aesthetic variations. It currently has a canoe-like shape for the sake of aerodynamics. It is made from carbon fibre, like the Chaparral airframe, has a pallet base and is enclosed on all sides with a fairing to protect cargo from the elements on the ground and in flight. Each pod also has four locator beacons on its approximate corners, to allow the Chaparral to align itself over the pods. It can detect the identity and location of a pod at up to several hundred metres. “They are ultra-wideband RF beacons similar to Apple AirTags, and the Chaparrals have corresponding transponders to triangulate the pod positions relative to themselves without needing something more complex and subject to environmental variations like computer vision to recognise and approach them,” Merrill explains. “Of course, we also use GNSS to tell the UAVs approximately where to navigate, for instance to the default pod pick-up location, but the beacons add the precision that enables a Chaparral to roll up and align its fuselage over its assigned cargo pod to within a couple of centimetres of accuracy – close enough that the automated grasping system can then pick up their container – all without needing RTK-GNSS.” August/September 2022 | Uncrewed Systems Technology The Chaparral can take off and land using minimal ground infrastructure, and avoid the maintenance costs and idle times of helicopters and traditional air freight craft The Chaparral’s canoe-shaped cargo pod is designed for automated pick-ups and drop-offs