AIR partners with Elmo Motion Control for cargo drone's motor drives

Electric aircraft developer AIR has announced a partnership with Elmo Motion Control to supply motor drives for its Heavy Lift UAS, an uncrewed vertical takeoff and landing cargo aircraft.

Under the deal, Elmo's Gold HV drives will control the eight electric propulsion motors on the aircraft, which is designed to carry payloads of as much as 550 pounds. The companies said the drives run on air cooling rather than a liquid-cooling system. They use a master-slave configuration that supplies 210 amps at 805 volts to each motor.

AIR said dropping liquid cooling cuts weight and simplifies the aircraft's systems. The company's chief executive, Rani Plaut, said the partnership was meant to support safe autonomous flight for defense, commercial and humanitarian logistics uses.

An Elmo sales and marketing executive said the drives offer high power density in a compact, air-cooled package.

AIR describes the Heavy Lift UAS as having about an hour of endurance and classifies it as a Group 4 unmanned aircraft system under U.S. Department of Defense standards. The company said it is targeting missions such as mid-mile cargo transport, maritime resupply and humanitarian deliveries.

More than 25 of the aircraft have already been ordered and paid for, according to AIR. The company noted this is one of several recent supplier partnerships announced for the cargo platform. Details of the other deals were not included in this announcement.