Autonomous Equipment Replacement & In-Air Logistics
UMD Gemstone Cohort 2029
We're figuring out how two drones can swap a payload in mid-air, so a mission never has to stop just to change hands.
Instead of landing to hand off a payload, two drones fly up to each other, line up, and pass the load across while both stay in the air. Because either drone can give or receive, the handoff works in both directions, and neither one ever has to touch the ground.
Right now a drone has to land at a station to change its payload. That means lost time, and in a lot of places, like a flood zone or a mountain, there's nowhere safe to land at all. For medical deliveries and disaster relief, that pit stop is exactly what slows everything down.
The handoff systems we found in the research only move a payload one way, whether it's a bridge, a rail, or an in-flight battery swap. We're after something harder: a transfer that stays fully in control, works both directions, and can scale up.
Four pieces have to work together: keeping the drones stable as the weight moves, helping them see and find each other, building the mechanism that actually passes the payload, and getting two aircraft to dock. Each is tricky on its own, and the margin for error when they all run at once is tiny.
If we can make mid-air handoffs reliable, drone networks can cover more ground and move more, without a redesign, which matters most when it's medical supplies or disaster relief on the line.
We came together under UMD's Gemstone Honors Program, a group of undergrads from different majors ready to take on a hard problem in unmanned aerial systems.
We narrowed our focus and landed on the core idea: autonomous mass transfer between drones, so UAVs can keep working without stopping to swap loads.
We're digging through the existing research on payload transfer, safety, and what's actually feasible, so we build on what's known before we start prototyping.
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University of Maryland, College Park
Gemstone Honors Program