Cheetah Air, a division of Cheetah Software Systems, started in 2014 with the intention of integrating drones into Cheetah’s leading-edge logistics platform to create a solution for drone delivery. While optimizing delivery services, we also strive to decrease the environmental impact of pollution caused by transportation operations through the integration of our UAV platforms…
Cheetah Air has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate at night under Part 107 regulations. This allows Cheetah Air to deliver packages and services 24 hours a day and further increases the capabilities to assist customers.
While Cheetah Software Systems has constantly pushed the cutting edge of logistic technologies for the past 30 years, they have taken another step further today. Cheetah Air, a division of Cheetah Software Systems, is an advanced, scalable drone delivery solution that is capable of operating multiple aircraft beyond line of sight. Cheetah’s software not only plans delivery routes, but also predicts extremely accurate arrival times as it adapts, live and automatically, to changing operational conditions. These changes include air traffic mitigation, weather, customer cancellations, new stop-insertion, and package weight changes. In the past four years, Cheetah Air has enabled this solution to become both consistent and reliable while increasing the capabilities and compatibilities with other aircraft systems.
Read the full press release HERE
The Cheetah Air team was contacted by the Discovery Channel to offer their inside and expertise on drone package delivery and the integration of Technology into drones enabling fully autonomous UAV platforms.
There’s plenty of buzz about the future of drone delivery for U.S. consumers, with Amazon featuring a parachuting package in its Super Bowl ad, and filing a patent for a floating airship warehouse to facilitate drone delivery. But residents in most U.S. cities are already well served by the postal service and a multitude of delivery people on all manner of bikes and trucks. Where drone delivery could really shine is in rural and hard-to-access areas. And they can deliver supplies that are far more crucial than pizza and Slurps.”
The Kilimanjaro Climb for Valor, organized by Tusker Trail http://www.tusker.com and led by Eddie Frank has returned safely after a 9 day trek that led the team to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The Kilimanjaro Climb for Valor was an organized climb benefiting the charity Duskin & Stephens http://www.duskinandstephens.com with 100% of proceeds going to support families of fallen soldiers.
The inaugural climb began on February 17th and concluded successfully on February 25th. The climbing group was comprised of two active service U.S. Special Forces veterans, injured in the line of duty along with family members of those who have fallen.
Eddie Frank has climbed Kilimanjaro 51 times over the past 39 years, and has worked closely with the Special Forces as a high altitude training consultant.
Cheetah Air, a division of Cheetah Software Systems, provided two drones, piloted by Cheetah Air CTO Edan Cain to record this important event by capturing video of the climb from an airborne platform. In addition to providing support to the Kilimanjaro Climb for Valor, the trip served as an opportunity to perform Cheetah’s first true high altitude drone research and development while operating in extreme temperatures (5o F), high winds (5-30mph) and extreme altitudes (10,000 -19,340 feet).
“We went knowing that the drones would be taxed to their limit and beyond in this rugged environment. The commercially available quad copter functioned well for video capture up to about 10,500 feet. Our hope was that this platform would continue to be operational up to around 15,000 feet. Anticipating the current commercial drone ceiling, we (the Cheetah-Air team) built a specialized high altitude craft designed to fly and function from 20,000 feet to past the summit altitude of 19,341 feet. I had to assemble the Cheetah Air drone stored inside my backpack and fly the drone at 19,000 feet in 5 Deg. F and 20mph winds. To see it work and work well considering the highest we had tested it in California being 9,500 feet, was hugely exciting. It was my intension to fly at the summit but the winds had really picked up and I did not want to have our craft disappear at the summit! This was truly the case of ‘discretion is the better part of valor.’ We fully intend to return and try again with an even more powerful craft and mother nature’s support!” said Edan after his return from the summit.
The lessons learned by Cheetah Air on the Kilimanjaro Climb for Valor have proven to be invaluable in Cheetah’s plans to deploy medicine to climbers in need or assisting search and rescue in finding a lost or stranded person by providing live video feeds to the rescue team. Beyond on-mountain usage, Cheetah’s development focus for commercial or business applications will clearly benefit from operation in extreme conditions. The application areas of pipeline monitoring and exploration, precision agricultural management and the delivery of products to customers using drones will in reality need to operate in unfavorable conditions to be commercially viable. Cheetah Air will continue to be a leader in this private and commercial autonomous and safe use of drones for both delivery and information analysis in almost all conditions.
The 2nd annual Kilimanjaro Climb for Valor will take place from April 24th to May 5th 2016. http://tusker.com/tusker-treks/kilimanjaro-climb/