Assessment of technical and commercial feasibility of a novel low-cost and ultra-efficient electric drive technology for Drone Delivery Systems

虽然新冠肺炎疫情正在给全球经济造成重大拖累，但它正在帮助加快几项新兴技术的开发和商业化，这些技术减少了人与人之间的接触，实现了流程自动化，并在社交距离的情况下提高了生产率。电动无人机是这些技术之一，被认为是无人机包裹递送市场当前和未来的使能技术，预计到2030年将出现巨大的市场增长。Camvertec开发了一种新型驱动技术，具有无刷操作和分档额定转换器，提供了强大、低成本和低维护的驱动解决方案，将总资本成本削减了35%-35%。该驱动器采用廉价材料，即铜和铁，并使用标准制造方法制造。其新颖的电磁和控制器设计消除了永久磁铁的使用(没有退磁问题)，显著提高了驱动器的可靠性指标。此外，Camvertec独特的、正在申请专利的轻质转子设计使驱动器重量比目前考虑用于无人机动力系统的无刷直流电机减轻了30%。该项目旨在研究、评估和证明Camvertec驱动器技术在电动无人机交付系统中的商业可行性，并为下一阶段的商业化运营奠定基础。该项目将把实验室验证的原型设计扩大到真正的尺寸，充分优化和特色化的原型设计，并从成本、尺寸、可靠性和效率方面量化其性能和经济性。

While the COVID-19 pandemic is creating a major drag on the global economy, it's helping to accelerate the development and commercialisation of several emerging technologies that reduce human-to-human contact, automate processes and increase productivity amid social distancing. Electric drones are among those technologies and considered as enabling technologies for the current and future of the Drone Package Delivery market with huge market growth anticipated by 2030\.Camvertec has developed a novel drive technology with brushless operation and a fractionally-rated converter, providing a robust, low-cost and low-maintenance drive solution, cutting the overall capital cost by 35-35%. The drive is built from inexpensive materials, i.e.copper and iron, and is manufactured using standard manufacturing methods.Its novel electromagnetic and controller design eliminate the use of permanent magnets (no demagnetisation issues) leading to significant increase in drive's reliability index.In addition, Camvertec's unique and patent-pending light-weight rotor design has enabled the drive weight to be lowered by 30% compared to BLDC motors currently being considered for drones powertrain.This project aims to study, assess and prove the commercial feasibility of Camvertec drive technology for electric drone delivery systems and set the foundation for commercialisation operation to move to the next phase. This project will scale up the laboratory-proven prototype design to a real size, fully optimised and characterised prototype design with its performance and economics quantified with respect to cost, size, reliability and efficiency.