Autonomous aircraft can carry 500 pounds of cargo

This is not your everyday delivery drone. Our mission is to enable same-day shipping to every person on the planet. This is Elroy Air's Chaparral, an autonomous vertical takeoff and landing vehicle that can automatically drop off and pick up cargo thanks to this robotic delivery system. Elroy says Chaparral can carry up to 500 pounds, a maximum range of 300 miles, and land in any 50-square-foot landing area. We got the chance to see Chaparral in Elroy's new facility just south of San Francisco. I don't often say this about drones, but at nearly the size of a Cessna, this is stunning to see in person. It sits just across from Elroy's first prototype Chaparral, which hit the skies in 2019. That was a demonstrator unit built to evaluate a few key technologies, which we'll get into in just a minute. What we're looking at now is what Elroy calls its first pre-production aircraft, the beating heart of the aircraft is a hybrid electric system. That's Elroy CEO David Merrill. He says they decided on a hybrid model, which uses fuel to charge a battery, to give Chaparral a longer range than if they'd gone all-electric. For most of our customers, they're going to be operating in a 150-mile shipping radius. So the aircraft can pick up cargo, fly it out up to 150 miles, land, deposit cargo, pick up a new load, and then come all the way back for a full 300 miles before it needs a refueling. Eight fans provide vertical flight and hovering, and four propellers allow the aircraft to transition to fixed-wing flight. But what Elroy really hopes will set it apart from other delivery drones are these modular cargo pods that will be pre-loaded by a ground crew. Each pod is equipped with tracking beacons that allow the Chaparral to locate their exact locations, pick up the pod, and then take off for its destination. So the idea is once the Chaparral reaches its destination, it will automatically drop off that delivery pod, then it can taxi over a new pod, pick that one up, and then take off to a new destination. We did it so that the aircraft could in effect behave as part warehouse robot, and could define this distinction between what the people involved in the operation are going to do, which is pack up the cargo container, put the container in the right place, and what the aircraft is going to do, which is pick up the container, take it from A to B. We don't want this aircraft to be waiting around while it gets loaded, waiting around to be unloaded. We wanted it to just pick up the next cargo container and go. This unit hasn't taken to the skies just yet. Merrill says they're working with NASA and the U.S. military to start flight testing and get FAA certified this year. And don't expect the Chaparral to be flying over your neighborhood right away. These aircraft will start being used first in more remote locations. The lowest risk missions, plus the need for improved logistics in places that are just hard to reach today, Alaska, places in continents where there's just not reliable road logistics. Merrill told me Elroy has relationships with large commercial customers, though he didn't name specific companies. And Elroy isn't just targeting commercial customers. They see uses for the military and for humanitarian organizations. Aircraft operator AYR Logistics, which supports groups like the United Nations and the World Food Program, has agreed to buy up to 100 Chaparral aircraft. In total, Elroy says it secured agreements for more than 500 aircraft across commercial, military and humanitarian customers. And in case you're wondering about that name, Elroy Air. There was once a cartoon that had a little boy named Elroy who was a big fan of science and aerospace. And the company is a little tip of the hat to that imagined future that little Elroy was embedded in. What do you think of the Chaparral? Let us know in the comments down below. If you enjoyed this video, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to CNET for more like it.