Lentola began developing cargo drones in 2017. Over the years, we have designed and flight-tested several different concepts to find the best possible solution. Among other things, we were the first in the world to experiment with an extraordinary folding-wing tailsitter (pictured).
Throughout this journey, we have gained extensive knowledge of the performance of different wing and fuselage designs. Based on this experience, the Lentola VTOL Cargo is the only cargo drone we would feel confident flying in almost any weather conditions.
Safety is Lentola’s top priority in all aspects of development and operations. The industry-standard approach to package delivery is to hover the aircraft and lower the package to the customer on a tether. However, the risks associated with hovering increase rapidly as wind speeds rise and temperatures drop. As accidents have occurred worldwide during such hovering operations, we have chosen to use a parachute rather than hovering to deliver packages, which we consider to be a much safer approach.
We have spent a long time developing our parachute delivery system. It may sound simple, but…
For a package to land in the customer’s yard, the release must be timed to a fraction of a second to ensure it reaches the exact desired coordinates. Since winds can be strong at the time of release and their direction can vary, we improve accuracy using an algorithm that accounts for wind direction and speed during flight. The package also includes parachutes and shipping boxes designed and tested for compatibility with Lentola aircraft and their attachment mechanisms.
Numerous articles have been written about Lentola. Yle first reported on Lentola in 2022, when we were preparing to launch beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone deliveries. Since then, we have demonstrated the system’s performance through thousands of flights, delivering everything from grocery bags and pharmacy supplies to newspapers and defibrillators. What our customers have in common is difficult access, a challenge found throughout rural areas and particularly in regions surrounded by bodies of water.
