Freespace Operations has achieved a ‘Cooperative Lift’ - technology that has enabled the company’s Callisto 50 heavy-lift drone to balance and safely carry loads up to 100 kilograms, four times what a single Callisto 50 has managed.
“Whilst we’re used to seeing drones fly in patterns for light shows, getting them to physically work together to carry weight is a completely different challenge, that we call Cooperative Lift. Universities and leading drone manufacturers worldwide have tried for years to solve Cooperative Lift with limited success,” Freespace Operations Co-founder, Ken King, said.
This achievement has enabled Freespace’s Australian-designed and built platform to complete missions previously limited to helicopters or large bespoke airframes.
“Cooperative Lift was an incredibly difficult technological challenge, both from a hardware and software perspective. Because the Callisto 50 is already one of the most capable and reliable platforms in its class, we were able to unlock Cooperative Lift by building on a proven system that we knew was capable of being scaled in this way," Freespace Co-founder and CTO, Leonard Hall, concluded.
"It might seem intuitive at first, but accounting for all the different variables of flight across two or more drones is no small feat. The movement of the weight, and of course the wind and weather, make it one of the most difficult challenges in drone flight. We are immensely proud to bring this capability online, a world first in our industry.”
Freespace Operations was founded in Melbourne in 2019 and has delivered 29 Australian Government and Defence contracts worth approximately AU $9 million.
The Cooperative Lift achievement has built on Freespace’s “Ship Ops” technology, recently showcased at Exercise Talisman Sabre 2025, where Callisto 50 drones demonstrated ship-to-ship and ship-to-shore logistics operations.
The Callisto has combined advanced hardware with control software designed by Freespace Co-founder and CTO Leonard Hall.