Hyundai receives a patent for a drone for car delivery
Hyundai has patented a drone that can transport cars by air. Many different applications have been invented for the copter.
Hyundai has patented a drone for transporting cars by air. The plan is to make it part of the transportation system, with each element complementing each other. For example, a drone can transport a car by air where there are no roads, and the car will tow the copter to a parking lot or gas station where it cannot get there on its own.
The CarBuzz website found Hyundai’s application for a cargo drone capable of transporting ground drones in the US Patent and Trademark Office database. Some of our colleagues called the decision unusual, although the Koreans did not really offer anything new. The idea of cooperative transportation systems, in this case a symbiosis of air and ground “platforms,” is similar to the Pop.Up Next flying taxi. It was once invented by Audi, Airbus, and Italdesign, but then considered unpromising.
Later, the Pop.Up Next concept was slightly modified and turned into Climb-E, but its essence remained unchanged. In general, Hyundai also proposes to create such a system, the parts of which will complement each other if necessary. For example, a drone could dock with a drone car and transport it by air from point A to point B. And the latter, in turn, would deliver the drone to, say, a closed parking lot when it landed. This is just one of the possible scenarios for using the drone. It can also carry cargo, act as a charging station for electric vehicles, or be a scout, as previously proposed by Ford.
Hyundai’s interest in such technology is not just for show, but because robots and drones are one of the main elements of the company’s development strategy. Back in 2019, the Koreans showed the Elevate concept, a walking drone that could deliver rescuers directly to the epicenter of a disaster, where maximum destruction is observed. In civilian life, a taxi drone could climb the porch of a house and pick up sedentary passengers, such as those in wheelchairs.
