What do you get while you put a supercharged Kawasaki Ninja H2R engine inside an unmanned drone? Maybe you have by no means requested your self that query. Kawasaki itself apparently did, although, and to all of our profit, it is since demonstrated the reply.

The Kawasaki Okay-Racer challenge is a multidisciplinary effort put collectively by Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Taking a few of the finest technological developments it is provide you with throughout its varied little one corporations, like Kawasaki Motors and Kawasaki Robotics, KHI has been working to advance its imaginative and prescient for what it calls “Near-Future Mobility” within the 2020s.

What Is The Kawasaki Okay-Racer Project?

Kawasaki Okay-Racer Unmanned Cargo Drone Delivery Diagram

Back in November 2021, Kawasaki first confirmed off its proof-of-concept prototype Okay-Racer X1. It’s Kawasaki’s first unmanned vertical takeoff and touchdown (VTOL) drone to be powered by the supercharged engine taken from a Ninja H2R. 

The objective of this craft, says Kawasaki, is to move cargo for logistics achievement. The challenge additionally includes a specifically crafted supply robotic that boards the Okay-RACER together with the cargo. Once the payload is delivered, the supply robotic is there to finish last-mile supply of the cargo to its ultimate vacation spot.

Okay-Racer, by the way, is an acronym for Kawasaki Researching Autonomic Compound to Exceed Rotorcraft. (We promise we aren’t making that up.)

How It’s Going

Kawasaki Okay-Racer X2 Prototype Cargo Payload Testing

Earlier in January 2024, Kawasaki examined the second iteration of its Okay-Racer challenge. Called the Okay-Racer X2, this prototype has integrated what Kawasaki has discovered by means of its developments up to now, and created a VTOL prototype that may efficiently carry a 200 kilogram (slightly below 441 pound) payload. 

It demonstrated this functionality within the video you possibly can see above, and says this may allow it to hold weights that common drones can’t. So far, Kawasaki claims that that is “the largest [payload] ever flown by an unmanned aircraft developed in Japan.” It’s a really particular declare, to make certain, but it surely’s nonetheless spectacular.

Why Build The Okay-Racer Project At All?

Kawasaki Delivery Robot, which hitches a journey on the Okay-Racer to assist last-mile cargo supply.

According to Kawasaki, the thought comes from the growing difficulties in deliveries and logistics within the extra mountainous areas of Japan. People stay within the mountains, and so they want provides. Viable companies like people who the Kawasaki Okay-Racer challenge might probably allow look like an thought price pursuing, in Kawasaki’s view.

Other potential use instances for this know-how embody harmful places, or within the occasion of pure disasters. While motorcycles with skilled riders are frequently called upon to help in supply of provides and relays of messages in emergency conditions, an unmanned drone with carrying capability just like the Okay-Racer X2 may very well be extremely helpful.

The Okay-Racer X2 has an estimated vary of a minimum of 100 kilometers, or about 62 miles. Its estimated endurance is a minimum of an hour, says Kawasaki. The firm plans to proceed testing and growth, in addition to work towards creating a mass-production model of this idea going ahead.