Engineering

Range is an efficiency problem before it is a battery problem.

Adding cells adds mass, and mass costs range — the returns stop quickly. The way to fly further is to waste less of the energy you already carry. That is what we build: an airframe that cruises on a wing, propulsion tuned to its operating point, and a control stack that flies the cheapest route rather than the shortest.

The airframe

Stork — lift like a multirotor, cruise like a plane

Pure multirotors burn their entire energy budget fighting gravity, which caps them at a few tens of kilometres. Fixed-wing aircraft cruise efficiently but need a runway at both ends — which last-mile delivery never has. Stork is a hybrid: rotors for vertical take-off and landing, a wing for the cruise in between.

Design range: 500km
Design range
Peak propulsion efficiency: 86.0%
Peak propulsion efficiency
Efficiency target: >80%
Efficiency target
Cost of goods, per unit: 21K AUD
Cost of goods, per unit

Propulsion efficiency vs advance ratio

Stork propeller model. Peak 86.0% at J = 0.22, against a design target of > 80%.

Propulsion

Past 80% propulsion efficiency

A propeller only works well across a narrow band of advance ratio — the relationship between how fast the aircraft moves forward and how fast the blade spins. Off-the-shelf props are compromises, designed for no particular aircraft, so they spend most of a flight off their best point.

We design ours the other way round: pick the cruise condition first, then shape the blade for it using CFD and aerodynamic modelling. The modelled curve peaks at 86.0% — comfortably past our 80% design target — and, crucially, stays high across the band Stork actually cruises in.

Modelling only counts once it survives contact with the air, so every candidate goes onto our own thrust rig and gets measured against the prediction before it flies.

Programmes

What we're actively building

A high-efficiency propeller exceeding 80% propulsion efficiency

In testing

Our first engineering programme, and the one everything else depends on. Propulsion is where most of a drone's energy budget is won or lost.

Optimise a propeller targeting greater than 80% efficiency using CFD and aerodynamic modelling.
Use lightweight, durable materials, validated by experimental testing on our own thrust rig.
Deliver a design that reduces energy use per kilometre and supports sustainable propulsion.

Expanding horizons: advanced propulsion for logistical drones

In design

Taking the propeller work and applying it across the whole powertrain — motors, ESCs and energy management — to extend range and payload together rather than trading one for the other.

Extend usable range without adding battery mass.
Match motor and propeller operating points so the aircraft cruises at peak efficiency.
Build energy management into the GNC stack so the aircraft flies the cheapest route, not just the shortest.

GNC

Reliability is the product

An autonomous aircraft carrying someone else's freight has to be predictable before it is impressive. Our embedded Guidance, Navigation and Control stack is the part a logistics operator is really buying.

Talk to the team

01
Guidance
Decides where the aircraft should go next — the route, the altitude, the energy plan. Optimising for cost per delivered kilogram rather than raw speed.
02
Navigation
Works out where the aircraft actually is, fusing GNSS with inertial sensing so position stays trustworthy when the signal degrades.
03
Control
Holds the aircraft on the plan through the transition between hover and wing-borne flight, which is where a hybrid VTOL is most fragile.