MicroPilot Launches XTENDERvalidate, a Design Life Cycle Management Tool for UAVs

MicroPilot, leader in autopilot solutions for miniature unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), released the world’s first available design life cycle tool for UAVs. XTENDERvalidate tracks a UAV through its design, implementation, validation, and production. With XTENDERvalidate, UAV manufacturers build quality systems that meet highlevel expectations.

UAV requirements originate from marketing teams, customers, manufacturing limitations, or government regulations. In all cases, XTENDER validate provides a tool for accurately documenting each requirement and its history. MicroPilot’s requirements management software offers a flexible means of satisfying requirements and provides progress and fulfillment reporting.

“Our new design life cycle solution allows our customers to develop high level requirements and then easily decompose them into appropriate lower level requirements” says Howard Loewen, MicroPilot President. “The tool tracks the requirements through development and testing to assure that the final system performs as the requirements specified.”

XTENDERvalidate allows system designers to ensure their UAV reacts appropriately in a wide variety of situations. With XTENDERvalidate, errors can be easily traced back to actual causes months or even years later. Its traceability feature tracks the contribution of all design team members. The validation process is also dynamic, allowing multiple validation methods, including flight testing, user testing, and simulator testing.

“Regulatory authorities are increasingly interested in how systems are designed,” says Loewen.“XTENDERvalidate is an effective way for manufacturers to show evidence that their systems are safe.”

XTENDERvalidate benefits also include efficient test bundling during test flights using electronic flight cards. These electronic test cards link flight tests to individual requirements and automatically submits post flight datalogs as validation artifacts to the appropriate requirements. Additionally, XTENDERvalidate incorporates a failure analysis tool that helps identify subsystem failure modes and link them to requirements, which ensures all subsystem failures are appropriately handled.