Robot model
Wingcopter 198
Wingcopter, founded in 2017 in Darmstadt, Germany by Tom Pluemmer, Jonathan Hesselbarth, and Ansgar Kadura, makes the Wingcopter 198, a fixed-wing tilt-rotor…
- Manufacturer
- Wingcopter
- Form factor
- aerial
- Maturity
- pilot
- Lifecycle
- active
- Deployments
- 1
- Website
- wingcopter.com ↗
Appears inLogistics robots/Delivery drones
Overview
Wingcopter, founded in 2017 in Darmstadt, Germany by Tom Pluemmer, Jonathan Hesselbarth, and Ansgar Kadura, makes the Wingcopter 198, a fixed-wing tilt-rotor electric vertical-takeoff delivery drone aimed at medical and logistics delivery in Africa and other remote regions. It carries up to five kilograms across up to three drop sites, ranges up to seventy-five kilometers at up to 150 kilometers per hour, and lets one operator monitor as many as ten aircraft, on roughly 110 million dollars of total funding including a 40-million-euro European Investment Bank investment in 2023 and a Series B closed in June 2025. The registry records it at pilot, leaning early-commercial, maturity: it holds beyond-visual-line-of-sight permissions in Germany and other European regions and ran real BVLOS medical deliveries in Malawi, but at humanitarian-project scale, while its flagship plan to deploy twelve thousand drones across forty-nine African countries is a multi-year target rather than realized volume, its revenue is very low at an aggregator-estimated 1.73 million dollars in 2024, and its US, Brazil, and Japan type certifications are in progress rather than granted, with no FAA BVLOS authorization. A correction worth recording: the storyline of a German delivery-drone startup struggling financially into insolvency belongs to Volocopter, which filed for insolvency in December 2024, not to Wingcopter, whose risk signal is thin revenue and repeated capital raises rather than a filed insolvency.
Verified vs. claimed
- Maturity stage
- pilot(Small-scale deployment in controlled or trial conditions.)
- Verified deployments
- 1 deployment on file
- Sources on file
- 5 sources, view all
Key facts
Payload
Range
Operating speed
Drive type
Autonomy level
Specs
Notes
Specs
Form Factor
Data & sources
Press releases
1
News coverage
1
Web sources
3
5 sources backing this record.View all →
Pricing
No verified price is on record for Wingcopter 198. Physical-AI systems are often sold through enterprise contracts or operated as a service rather than at a public list price.
Deployments (1)
- Wingcopter 198 at Lilongweoperational
Wingcopter 198 delivery drone deployed for medical supply delivery in Malawi, Africa.
Wingcopter 198 on the deployment map
Where Wingcopter 198 is verified operating. Explore the deployment map by place and type.
- delivery and inspection drones in United States →
- delivery and inspection drones in California →
- delivery and inspection drones in Ukraine (combat zones) →
- delivery and inspection drones in Nevada →
- delivery and inspection drones in United Kingdom →
- delivery and inspection drones in China →
- The global deployment map →
Recent activity
Every change to this record is dated, sourced, and independently verified where marked.
- Verified media addedVerifiedJun 5, 2026
Wingcopter 198 delivery drone
- Record createdJun 3, 2026
Added to the verified registry
Deployment-verified media (1)
Wingcopter's film for the Wingcopter 198, an electric tilt-rotor delivery drone. 'World's first triple-drop,' one-operator-controls-ten, and autonomous routing are the maker's claims.
From deployment: Lilongwe
Regulatory filings (1)
- otherother · euactive
Applicant: Wingcopter
Safety record
No incidents on record for Wingcopter 198.
Only active incidents are counted. Retracted incidents are excluded from this summary but remain reachable at their canonical URLs.
Sources (5)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingcopter
- https://dronelife.com/2025/06/30/wingcopter-secures-new-funding-and-strengthens-leadership-team/
- https://www.therobotreport.com/wingcopter-brings-in-42m-for-delivery-drones/
- https://dronenews.africa/wingcopter-in-malawi-to-stay/
- https://wingcopter.com/wingcopter-198
Common questions
- What is Wingcopter 198?
- Wingcopter, founded in 2017 in Darmstadt, Germany by Tom Pluemmer, Jonathan Hesselbarth, and Ansgar Kadura, makes the Wingcopter 198, a fixed-wing tilt-rotor electric vertical-takeoff delivery drone aimed at medical and logistics delivery in Africa and other remote regions. It carries up to five kilograms across up to three drop sites, ranges up to seventy-five kilometers at up to 150 kilometers per hour, and lets one operator monitor as many as ten aircraft, on roughly 110 million dollars of total funding including a 40-million-euro European Investment Bank investment in 2023 and a Series B closed in June 2025. The registry records it at pilot, leaning early-commercial, maturity: it holds beyond-visual-line-of-sight permissions in Germany and other European regions and ran real BVLOS medical deliveries in Malawi, but at humanitarian-project scale, while its flagship plan to deploy twelve thousand drones across forty-nine African countries is a multi-year target rather than realized volume, its revenue is very low at an aggregator-estimated 1.73 million dollars in 2024, and its US, Brazil, and Japan type certifications are in progress rather than granted, with no FAA BVLOS authorization. A correction worth recording: the storyline of a German delivery-drone startup struggling financially into insolvency belongs to Volocopter, which filed for insolvency in December 2024, not to Wingcopter, whose risk signal is thin revenue and repeated capital raises rather than a filed insolvency.
- How much does Wingcopter 198 cost?
- Wingcopter 198's price is not publicly disclosed. DEPLOY has no verified price on record for Wingcopter 198 from Wingcopter. Physical-AI systems like this are often sold through enterprise contracts or operated as a service rather than at a public list price; check the manufacturer for the latest.
- Is Wingcopter 198 actually deployed in the real world?
- Yes. Wingcopter 198 is independently verified in real-world operation on the DEPLOY registry, confirmed at named deployment sites with primary sources: not a concept, render, or demo-only.
- Who makes Wingcopter 198?
- Wingcopter 198 is made by Wingcopter, based in Darmstadt, Germany, founded in 2017.
- Where is Wingcopter 198 deployed?
- 1 verified deployment of Wingcopter 198 is on the DEPLOY registry, including at Lilongwe.
- Can you buy Wingcopter 198?
- Wingcopter 198 is in pilot deployments with named customers and is not yet broadly for sale.
- Is Wingcopter 198 approved by regulators?
- Wingcopter 198 has 1 regulatory record on the DEPLOY registry: regulatory filing, active. See the Regulatory filings section for each agency source.
- What are alternatives to Wingcopter 198?
- On the DEPLOY registry, comparable aerial robots to Wingcopter 198 include Skydio X10, Wing Delivery Aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper, Matternet M2.
- How does Wingcopter 198 compare to Skydio X10?
- Wingcopter 198 and Skydio X10 (Skydio · 5 deployments) are both aerial robots on the DEPLOY registry. Wingcopter 198 has 1 verified deployment on record. Compare both records for specs, safety, deployments, and verified-vs-claimed autonomy.
- Is Wingcopter 198 a top aerial?
- On DEPLOY's intelligence score, which blends verified deployments, safety, adoption, media, and IP signals, Wingcopter 198 ranks in roughly the top 55% of aerial models tracked by the registry.
- What is Wingcopter 198's maturity stage?
- Wingcopter 198 is at the pilot stage on the DEPLOY maturity ladder (research, prototype, pilot, commercial, production). Pilot stage means at least one named-customer trial deployment is verified.
- Is Wingcopter 198 safe?
- Wingcopter 198 has no incidents on record in the DEPLOY registry. This does not constitute a safety guarantee; it reflects the incidents DEPLOY has tracked and verified to date.
Methodology: Verified · 5 sources (1 primary) · last reviewed 2026-07-12
Verification posture
Verified
High confidence
Review state
Stable
Last reviewed 2026-07-12
Maturity + lifecycle
Maturity stage: pilot
Lifecycle: active
Architectural position
Cohort: aerial
Sources by quality tier
- 2
- unclassified
- Unclassified source
- 1
- knowledge-base
- Knowledge base
- 1
- secondary-trade-publication
- Trade publication
- 1
- primary-company-ir
- Company IR disclosure
The framework is documented at /methodology. Corrections at /corrections. Reviewer: DEPLOY editorial team.
Methodology surface for Wingcopter 198.Recent coverage
Wingcopter 198 in third-party press
In the press
Recent coverage mentioning Wingcopter 198 from third-party publications. Automatically surfaced; not part of the verified registry record.
Machine-readable surfaces
- Markdown mirror: /models/wingcopter-198.md
- JSON-LD: embedded in this page’s head
- REST API: /v1/models/9318fc41-6011-427d-b1a0-529ecf668815
- Revision history: /models/wingcopter-198/history
- Data documentation: /data
- Query this programmatically: Deploy MCP
Video
Reality vs attention
Wingcopter 198 draws attention at the 39th percentile but verifies reality at the 32nd percentile among aerial robots. Hype Gap +7.3, 30th widest among aerial robots.
6-month trend
Analysis
Thin deployment record; scale validation still in progress.
Signal flags
Dimension breakdown
Verified signal
Attention (reach, not merit)
DEPLOY Intelligence scores are computed from verified registry data: confirmed deployments, disclosed funding rounds, regulatory filings, active job listings, video viewership, and press coverage. Confidence ratings reflect data availability. Scores update nightly.
DEPLOY Indices — verified vs claimed
Last computed: Jul 18, 2026