Australian drone technology company Freespace Operations has built a technology – Cooperative Lift – that enables the Callisto 50 heavy-lift drone to balance and safely carry loads up to 100kg, four times what a single drone can manage.
The Callisto 50 is a heavy-lift multirotor drone designed and manufactured in Australia. It originally supported up to 25kg payloads and is built for defense, industrial, and commercial applications.
The technology enables Freespace’s Australian-designed and built platform to complete missions previously limited to helicopters or large bespoke airframes. While the drones are currently used in the defence and logistics industries, given their heavy load capacity there could be scope for use in the mining and resources sector.
Co-founder Ken King says this development will increase the range of tasks that can be assigned to drones in a variety of heavy industries and defense applications.
“Whether it is carrying supplies to a moving ship, mineral exploration, mining logistics, stringing new power lines, or delivering life-saving supplies in an emergency situation, this breakthrough will mean our customers can get more done with their drone fleets than ever before,” King says.
The Cooperative Lift builds on Freespace’s proven ‘ship ops’ technology, where Callisto 50 drones showed ship-to-shore logistics operations. Together, these advances mark a step-change in how defense forces and industries can transport supplies, parts and equipment.
King says Cooperative Lift was a difficult technological challenge from a hardware and software perspective.
“Because the Callisto 50 is already one of the most capable and reliable platforms in its class, we were able to unlock Cooperative Lift by building on a proven system that we knew was capable of being scaled in this way,” he says.
Freespace Operations is an Australian company that designs and manufactures heavy lift multirotor drone systems for the defence, enterprise, and public safety sectors.
Write to Aaliyah Rogan at Mining.com.au
Images: Freespace Operations
