Swift020 VTOL UAS
The first all electric transitional vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) UAS
In 2013 Swift created its internal research and development program. The R&D team began development of an entirely new class of UAS: Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), Transition to Horizontal Flight. This all-electric UAV is runway independent, has no rotating mechanisms to go from VTOL to horizontal flight, and has been developed for the commercial land and maritime marketplaces. Swift developed this entire system in-house including its autopilot, hardware/software package to report vehicle health and status, and a ground control system.
During the evolution of this UAS Swift developed a fault tolerant avionics bus and assorted sensor modules, power electronics, load switches to allow for aircraft operation, health monitoring, and performance monitoring. Swift also developed protocols for telemetry communication, storage across wireless links, and software to store and index the received data using techniques that can scale to high throughput cloud computing installations. Swift is partnering with companies to provide a full low-SWaP, detect and avoid (DAA) system.
Innovation is a driver for growth
The Swift020 program has been retired to make room for its predecessor the Swift021 which has a 2 hr. endurance, 1 kg payload, with a 60 mile COMM range. It has proven autonomous landings and take-offs from ships, provides multiple commercialization paths, and is easily operated by 1-2 people. In 2020, Swift sold its first production variants of the Swift021.