#28 – Natilus: the startup building large autonomous cargo drones

Aleksey Matyushev is the co-founder and CEO of Natilus, a startup headquartered in San Francisco. Natilus has set out to reduce global air freight costs through the use of large autonomous drones, and has moved quickly over the last couple of years to develop a sea-plane prototype to serve as a technology demonstrator. The engineers at Natilus are now moving ahead at full steam to design a land-based freighter drone based on a blended-wing body. As the name suggests, a blended aircraft has no clear demarcation line between wings and fuselage. Advantages of this approach are efficient lift generation aided by the wide airfoil-shaped body, allowing the entire aircraft to generate lift. This means that a blended wing body has better lift-to-drag ratios than a conventional aircraft, resulting in improved fuel efficiency. One particular challenge, however, is that a blended wing body does not feature a vertical and horizontal tail, and this makes controlling the aircraft particularly challenging. In this episode of the Aerospace Engineering Podcast, Aleksey and I talk about:

• his educational journey to becoming an expert aerodynamicist
• the technical details of the freighter drone Natilus is designing
• Natilus’s business model
• and near-term developments that are in the pipeline.

Last but not least, Natilus is currently hiring for a number of roles. So if you're interested in working for an innovative, fast-moving company, then head over to their website.

If you want to learn more about the topics discussed in this episode, then you can find show notes with links to more in-depth material on the aerospace engineering blog. If you want to support the show then please leave a review; share it on social media with your friends and family; or support the podcast directly on Patreon. Thanks a lot for listening!

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