ABU DHABI, UAE \u2014 For most of the last 50 years, the symbol of a successful \u201cfuture\u201d has been the long-promised, never-realized flying car. While most of us have long ago given up dreams of seeing these hybrids take to the air in real life, that is exactly the catalyst that has driven entrepreneur Svilen Rangelov and his aeronautical brother, Konstantin, to develop the prototype of an unmanned drone that will soon be able to carry 350-kilogram cargo loads for 2,500 kilometers, at a much cheaper price than conventional aircraft.
\nRangelov, the co-founder and CEO of unmanned aerial vehicle maker, Dronamics, spoke at yesterday\u2019s first-ever \u201cHorizon\u201d forum on innovation that was open to all WCS delegates. Celine Hourcade, head of Cargo Transformation for IATA, led a lively discussion, fully engaging the audience and challenging them to share opinions and feedback.
\nLast year, Hourcade said, IATA held a Horizon session that was just reserved for chief information officers, but said it felt it lacked something. \u201cSometimes the best ideas don\u2019t come just from IT specialists,\u201d she said. \u201cWe need to modernize and reinvent ourselves. We need to open it all the way up to the rest of the delegates.\u201d
\nRangelov went on to describe the development of Dronamics\u2019 first working prototype, called the \u201cBlack Swan,\u201d which is about to have its first test flight. He said he discovered a need for the drone for poor people who live in remote communities, and who may have trouble finding access by road, but cannot afford modern air cargo rates.
\nBesides Rangelov, the Monday workshop featured presentations by Wojciech Soltysiak, the chief technology and innovation officer at CHAMP Cargosystems. Soltysiak warned attendees of an impending \u201cDigital Tornado\u201d of disruptive technologies that are coming to air cargo, not necessarily to take away everyone\u2019s jobs, but to speed up the process, remove wasted effort and increase efficiency.
\nOne highlight of his talk was a live demonstration of the use of already existing technology doing something no one thought of before \u2013 such as using Amazon\u2019s Alexa voice recognition module to search for air cargo quotes. Within seconds of his request, Alexa had four possible cargo flights available immediately.
\nThomas Pellegrin, of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, also spoke about the growing popularity of using blockchain as a simple tool to verify transactions, although he acknowledged that most people in air cargo (and in the Horizon workshop) had only a vague idea of what blockchain is. In a nutshell, blockchain, Pellegrin described, is a peer-to-peer network, used most often in the Bitcoin realm, that has no central authority but can record every aspect of a complex transaction and keep an ironclad record of every step taken \u2014 something that could eliminate much of added work seen in the supply chain, where each stakeholder must validate the paper trail of a given item being shipped.
\nOne of the themes of the Horizon workshop was to never give up on an idea that has merit just because you\u2019re short on funding or suffered some setbacks. As Rangelov said when he began Dronamics two and a half years go, he and his brother were clean-shaven, but they made a pact with each other to not shave until the first Dronamics prototype took flight. If you want to ask him about perseverance, you can\u2019t miss him: He\u2019s the one with the Bulgarian accent and a foot-long beard.
\nSource: aircargoworld<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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