Design and analysis of an unmanned cargo transport aerial vehicle

This paper presents the L-12 Wallaby, a design solution proposed for a humanitarian response unmanned aircraft vehicle, capable of delivering supplies to disaster-affected areas. The L-12 configuration selected is a tiltrotor system with VTOL capability, which is necessary for an aircraft operating from a disaster-affected zone where the terrain may not be suitable for CTOL. This capability inherently increases the multi-role performance of the aircraft. Since most of the aircraft’s mission is spent in fixed-wing cruise configuration, the aircraft was optimized as a fixed-wing vehicle with rotorcraft capabilities specific only for VTOL. Because of the high complexity involved in unmanned aircraft systems, various selected functionalities such as a simplified cargo loading/unloading system were designed into the aircraft to ensure a high mission success rate. In the presence of each design-oriented decision made, careful assessment was made to ensure potential multi-functional uses of the aircraft, including cargo delivery to ships, oil platforms, remote stations, etc.