Cost-effective cargo drone takes flight

The Tianma 1000 unmanned transport plane completed its maiden flight on Sunday morning from an airport in Shaanxi province, marking a significant step in China's development of autonomous heavy-lift aviation.

Developed by Xi'an ASN Technology Group, a subsidiary of the state-owned China North Industries Group Corp, the drone is designed to navigate complex plateaus and operate from exceptionally short runways.

In addition to standard cargo transport, the Tianma 1000 can airdrop supplies, making it suitable for rapid delivery and emergency rescue missions.

Designers said the aircraft has a maximum operating altitude of 8 kilometers and a maximum range of 1,800 km. It requires a takeoff or landing distance of less than 200 meters and has a maximum payload of 1 metric ton, roughly equivalent to the weight of a standard vehicle.

Equipped with an optical-guided landing assistance system, the aircraft can identify landing zones under low-visibility conditions such as rain, snow, fog and haze, enabling high-precision autonomous landings. It is designed to operate in complex environments, including plateaus, coastal areas and mountainous regions, and is intended to maintain a high success rate and reliability during emergency missions.

Engineers integrated artificial intelligence technology with cargo transport systems to develop an intelligent loading and unloading mechanism. The system can independently load or unload up to 1 ton of supplies within five minutes, significantly reducing labor costs.

The Tianma 1000 is also capable of intelligent route planning and autonomous obstacle avoidance, allowing it to detect and evade obstacles while charting safe and cost-effective flight paths in unfamiliar airspace and complex terrain. Designers said the aircraft can maintain stable and controllable flight in adverse weather conditions, including strong crosswinds and airflow disturbances, through an attitude and position fault-tolerant system.

The model supports continuous and precise airdrops of multiple batches and a variety of supplies, further improving mission success rates and operational efficiency, designers said.

Ma Chunhao, the Tianma 1000's chief designer, said that when deployed to remote areas, the aircraft can deliver food, medicine and equipment sufficient for several days' use in a single sortie at acceptable cost. He said the drone's capabilities would help address long-standing transportation challenges in underdeveloped or disaster-stricken regions.

Ma added that the aircraft uses a modular cargo compartment design, allowing users to install mission-specific modules for tasks such as swarm deployment and communications relay.

The Tianma 1000 is the second drone model developed by Xi'an ASN Technology Group to complete a maiden flight this month.

Recently, the LQ-150, a multirole drone with a maximum takeoff weight of about 200 kilograms, conducted its first flight in Shaanxi.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn