51 Addressing this ‘many-to-many’ problem and making drone delivery as straightforward as acquiring a Parrot or DJI toy are what motivated RigiTech to develop its UAS, starting in 2018 under the shadow of Mt. Rigi (hence the company name). That development work resulted not only in its Eiger UAV (also named for a Swiss mountain), but also its RigiCloud solution, encompassing the logistics operator’s GCS, UTM system, regulatory compliance wizard, and fleet management and maintenance portal. RigiTech’s three co-founders pool copious experience from other UAV organisations, with Klaptocz having spent a long tenure in product engineering for Sensefly since its early days. He and now chief business officer David Rovira became introduced to uncrewed logistics through humanitarian work, during which they met Oriol López (now CTO, who was working for Médecins Sans Frontières). López specialised in how UAVs could perform logistics for villages located in hard to reach areas. The three men subsequently led UAV experiments in Peru’s most jungled areas and quickly discovered that a lifesaving parcel, typically needing a six-hour riverboat journey to reach its patient, could be delivered by drone in 10 minutes. Rapid development of a solution with the ideal infrastructure around it followed, including hiring its now lead cloud software architect, to achieve the cloud server-based concept for fleet management, flight clearances and so forth that could make UAV logistics practical, traceable and seamless. As well as critical software development over time, the co-founders (at their headquarters in Lausanne) focused on rapid iteration of the ideal aircraft, including getting to test flights as quickly as possible, to learn what engineering was needed to make a long-lasting UAV that could fly routes effectively. “Within the first month of founding the company, we were test-flying an off-the-shelf VTOL drone in Tanzania, and it could carry 2 kg and fly 100 km,” Klaptocz says. “Now, six years later, we have an aircraft that carries 3 kg, so very similar specs on the surface – specifically, a 104 kph cruising speed, 22 kg MTOW and 268 cm x 164 cm x 42 cm dimensions. But Eiger and that test drone are worlds apart in terms of safety, reliability and intelligence, not to mention how we can manage it. “We did test flight programs in Italy, Portugal, Tanzania, and all sorts of places to refine the hardware and software, and it was in 2022 that we brought Eiger to market. We now ship the UAV worldwide, along with paperwork for flight clearances and training and CONOPS manuals.” Volume versus weight Designing the Eiger was largely a packaging exercise, fitting subsystems around a 15 litre empty space – the delivery drone’s cargo hold. “When we talk about payload capacity in this industry, it almost always falls onto the metric of weight, which is something of a brute force number, derivative of motor and prop lifting power,” Klaptocz says. “But optimising for aerodynamic efficiency at a certain point gives you sleek, thin airframes. Those are fine for carrying a camera gimbal, because that’s a dense, concentrated ball of weight. But, for package delivery, what you really need is space: you don’t use Maseratis to deliver freight; you use vans and 18-wheel trucks. So payload volume has been much more important and practical for us than weight capacity. “We’ve had customers demand 5-10 kg of capacity, but then when they actually put their blood vials or first aid kits into the drone, it’s more like 1-1.5 kg RigiTech Eiger UAV | Digest Within the first month of founding the company, we were test-flying an off-the-shelf VTOL drone in Tanzania, and it could carry 2 kg and fly 100 km Uncrewed Systems Technology | April/May 2025 The UAV is designed around a 15 litre cargo bay, enabling rapid logistics of medical items for users across many countries
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