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

虽然COVID-19疫情对全球经济造成重大拖累，但它有助于加速多项新兴技术的开发和商业化，这些技术可减少人与人之间的接触，实现流程自动化，并在社交距离增加的情况下提高生产力。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技术，预计到2030年将实现巨大的市场增长。Camvertec开发了一种具有无刷操作和部分额定转换器的新型驱动技术，提供了一种强大的，低成本和低维护的驱动解决方案，将总资本成本降低了35- 35%。该驱动器由廉价材料制成，如铜和铁，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磁体的使用（无退磁问题），从而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型转子设计使驱动器重量降低了30%与目前考虑用于无人机动力系统的无刷直流电机相比，该项目旨在研究，评估和证明Camvertec驱动技术用于电动无人机交付系统的商业可行性，并为商业化运营奠定基础，以进入下一阶段。该项目将把经过实验室验证的原型设计扩大到真实的尺寸，充分优化和表征原型设计，并在成本、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.