We have already talked about it drones capable of lifting loads (even heavy ones), but usually they were giants, even transportable on a vehicle. This little drone does its job lifting loads of up to 15kg (33lbs, quite a lot of deliveries or filming equipment fall into this range), but can only be carried by one person. It is foldable.
Note: if 15kg seems low to you, know that it is 2 and a half times the weight that can be lifted by drones of its same size.
It's called Hera, and it's a quadcopter produced by Realtime Robotics, a California-based company. Its strength is in the carbon fiber cells, solid but light, and in the foldable propellers for transport and storage. When closed, the Hera measures 55x34x22 centimeters (22 x 13,7 x 9 inches) and can be carried comfortably in a backpack.
What do we do with 15 kilograms?
As mentioned, produced or filmed. In particular, this last function can be enhanced by a foldable drone of this kind: on Hera many cameras and sensors can be placed, even on four separate stabilizers. For example, one of these drones can be equipped with a visual camera, a thermal one and a LIDAR sensor at the same time. There is also a retractable landing gear, which allows the camera to rotate 360 degrees without shooting parts of the quadcopter.
Autonomy? Impressive for this size: nearly an hour of flight time (56 minutes, but unloaded) on a single charge of its 44,4V/29.400mAh lithium battery.
A foldable “elephant”.
Secondo Quoc Luong, founder of Realtime Robotics, the combination of Hera's lifting power and portability is a winner. He doesn't say it because he did it, right? We feel.
All backpack-sized helicopters use a motor with a maximum thrust of less than 1,8kg (4 lbs.). A more powerful motor requires a larger propeller, and as a result, a normal drone won't fit in a backpack. Ours yes. It has a much more powerful engine, but an absolutely unique folding system: that is the winning difference.
It is clear that so many functional features have a considerable cost: whether they are companies, individuals or military bodies (ALWAYS put this variant in it, by now), customers will have to wait for August and prepare about 25.000 euros to take this folding drone home.
The backpack is free. I hope.
