H2 Clipper Achieves Major Advanced "Swarm Robotics" Breakthrough For Large Scale Airship Manufacturing

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., Jan. 4, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- H2 Clipper, Inc., an aerospace and alternative energy company developing uniquely capable hydrogen-powered airships and end-to-end hydrogen infrastructure solutions, announces that it has been granted US Patent No. 11,851,214 ('214 patent) entitled: "SYSTEM, METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AIRSHIP MANUFACTURE USING ROBOTICS." This foundational robotics patent using advanced "swarm robotics" achieves radical reductions of cost and quantum advances in manufacturing techniques for a wide variety of applications—including large scale lighter than air airships.

H2 Clipper is determined to use the most advanced technology to safely build, launch and fly its "green" Clipper airships that will cruise typically at 150mph powered by hydrogen using fuel cells to create propulsion and using hydrogen as the lifting gas. The time efficiencies and massive manufacturing cost reductions that Swarm Robotics will permit for all airships construction in the future provides a viable economic path for hydrogen powered flight that will greatly reduce the costs associated with the transport of liquid hydrogen and containerized freight.

The dawn of the coming revolution in aviation aerospace utilizing massive airships for the sustainable transport of cargo, was marked by the FAA recently granting a special airworthiness certificate for LTA Research's Pathfinder for air testing. These massive airships, with their cargo hauling ability, are the future of cargo transport. However, because of their size traditional aerospace building techniques are not economically feasible. H2 Clipper's '214 patent provides an innovative approach to utilizing "swarm" robotics to efficiently construct these airships of the future. 

H2 Clipper founder and CEO Rinaldo Brutoco said, "When we finished designing the major structural components of our airship, with our partners at Dassault Systèmes as set forth in recently granted US Patent No. 11,820,482 entitled: "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR LIGHTER-THAN-AIR AIRSHIP WITH IMPROVED STRUCTURE AND DELIVERY SYSTEM," we realized that something so massive would require a hangar 24 stories high and 1500 feet long. We recognized that we could not build the airships of the future using a conventional assembly line. We therefore began to develop advanced robotic technology that utilized ambulatory and floor mounted robots working in concert as a "swarm" to co-construct the exoskeleton of the airship." Additionally, in filing the foundational robotics patent Brutoco foresaw the use of conventional programming being supplied by its Dassault partners to tell the robots how to work together to assemble the massive ship; and then, moving on to teach the robots what they had done and how using artificial intelligence; and then, as a third stage instructing the robots how to teach themselves in the future how to optimize construction using generative artificial intelligence.

H2 Clipper as a supplier of midstream enabling technology to industry, has a mission to develop and commercialize a global fleet of 100% green airships, to be built some by itself and 90% built by other licensee companies that will transform the hydrogen and air transport industry.

H2 Clipper was selected in 2021 for inclusion in Dassault Systèmes' exclusive 3DEXPERIENCE^®Lab accelerator program up to September, 2023 when it was given a new 3 year contract by Dassault and broadened to cover robotic software development for H2 Clipper.

The Company believes that developing Swarm Robotics as a licensable manufacturing technology was a necessary step to make it possible for multiple governmental and private licensees to envision how they could leapfrog conventional aircraft manufacturing to be able to profitably and swiftly construct the massive airships. H2 Clipper believes that the average time to construct an airship will drop to 12 months or less per ship depending on how many robots are assigned to each ship.

H2 Clipper is represented in intellectual property matters by John C. Serio, a Partner in the Intellectual Property and Technology Group at London based Withers Worldwide.

About H2 Clipper, Inc.
H2 Clipper, Inc. is the midstream developer of high-speed, "Pipeline-In-The-Sky™" hydrogen-powered airships for long distance liquid hydrogen global transport that use no fossil fuels, and have a host of commercial and humanitarian applications; and, of the new Pipe-Within-A-Pipe™ "last mile", safety pipe, distribution system to deliver gaseous pure hydrogen to end users. Since 2008, the company has made significant strategic investments to research, develop, and patent core IP in modern airship design and regional solutions for delivery of hydrogen, forming a global end-to-end hydrogen infrastructure. 

H2 Clipper recently completed the research and concept design phases on its disruptive modern airships using the Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE® platform. The airship-based Pipeline-In-the-Sky™ for transporting pure liquid hydrogen to market also enables point-to-point delivery of cargo and other payloads at with a cruising speed of 150-miles per hour, providing a time saving and money saving  economic advantage over truck, rail, ship, airplane, or pipeline over distances greater than 500 miles.

SOURCE H2 Clipper, Inc.