This foundational robotics patent using advanced 'swarm robotics' achieves radical reductions of cost and quantum advances in manufacturing techniques for a wide variety of applications — including large-scale lighter than air airships.
H2 Clipper is determined to use the most advanced technology to safely build, launch and fly its 'green' Clipper airships that will cruise typically at 150 mph powered by hydrogen using fuel cells to create propulsion, using hydrogen as the lifting gas. The time efficiencies and massive manufacturing cost reductions that swarm robotics will permit for all airships construction in the future provides a viable economic path for hydrogen-powered flight that will greatly reduce the costs associated with the transport of liquid hydrogen and containerised freight.
The dawn of the coming revolution in aviation aerospace utilising massive airships for the sustainable transport of cargo, was marked by the FAA recently granting a special airworthiness certificate for LTA Research's Pathfinder for air testing. These massive airships, with their cargo hauling ability, are the future of cargo transport. However, because of their size, traditional aerospace building techniques are not economically feasible. H2 Clipper's '214 patent provides an innovative approach to utilising swarm robotics to efficiently construct these airships of the future.
H2 Clipper Founder and CEO, Rinaldo Brutoco, said: "When we finished designing the major structural components of our airship, with our partners at Dassault Systèmes, as set forth in recently granted US Patent No. 11,820,482, we realised that something so massive would require a hangar 24 stories high and 1500 ft. long. We recognised that we could not build the airships of the future using a conventional assembly line. We therefore began to develop advanced robotic technology that utilised ambulatory and floor mounted robots working in concert as a 'swarm' to co-construct the exoskeleton of the airship."
Additionally, in filing the foundational robotics patent, Brutoco foresaw the use of conventional programming being supplied by its Dassault partners to teach the robots how to work together to assemble the massive ship; and then, moving on to teach the robots what they had done and how by using artificial intelligence (AI). As a third stage, the robots were instructed how to teach themselves in the future to optimise construction using generative AI.
H2 Clipper, as a supplier of midstream enabling technology to industry, has a mission to develop and commercialise a global fleet of 100% green airships that will transform the hydrogen and air transport industry.