Pinpoint landing from above the clouds
New autonomously controlled parachute system ALF makes it possible
A fully controllable parachute, assuring pinpoint landing, has been developed at the Institute for Statics and Dynamics in Air and Space constructions (ISD) of the university of Stuttgart in cooperation with TAO and has been presented to the public in August 2003. The system allows pinpoint landing on a predetermined landing site. The parachute is controlled in flight by an electronic control system permanently indicating and integrating the respective flight situation. Before launching the parachute the landing side is communicated to the system.
In fact it is a perfect system to assure pinpoint landing for all sorts of emergency equipment and products launched from an airplane when environmental disasters such as earthquakes or devastating floods make any transport of emergency equipment and products by road or water actually impossible, and humanitarian help for the population is only possible by airborne operations. The conventional systems count with losses of up to 30 % of the launched products the parachutes being drifted away by winds or landing in inaccessible areas.
The “Alf”- parachute-system is ready to be marketed. Various tests of the prototypes have proved its efficiency and its easy handling. There are no experts needed to operate the system, the product has a fair price and can be used worldwide. The payload of the system amounts to in between 20 kg and two to. The parachutes actually used may carry a payload up to 140 kg.
The mechanical control movements of a parachute pilot are replaced by a mechanical automatic system following the instructions of an autonomous model based working flight control system assisted by satellite based navigation (GPS) and compass data the parachute assures automatically pinpoint landing.
Board equipment and set target
The new autonomous flying parachute
- allows the pinpoint landing of equipment and products
- facilitates the logistics of distribution at the landing side
- reduces drastically loss of cargo in operation
95 % of the cargo dropped from the airplane will reach the set target.
We refer also to the respective press releases.
