Embention has released the following article highlighting how the company’s Veronte autopilot can be used to control VTOL tiltwing and tiltrotor UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).
The UAV development market has entered a golden age, with companies all around the world working to have their products ready for market. One of the preferred designs so far is the VTOL UAV layout, due to its flexibility and efficiency for transportation, surveillance and tactical applications. From helicopters to hybrid platforms, tilting aircraft stand out due to the efficiency levels they can provide.
A tilting aircraft is defined as a platform that is able to modify its configuration during the flight, generally tilting power plants and control surfaces more than 90º, taking advantage of their full potential during most stages of the flight.
Flight phases are fully configurable in the Veronte autopilot, and users can define vertical operation flight phases (take-off, hover, etc), transition flight phases (tilting) and horizontal flight phases (cruise, hold, etc) – each with independent control loops.
As good as it may sound, designing a tilting aircraft is not a bed of roses by any means. The increased complexity compared to traditional setups will pose great design, manufacturing, maintenance and control challenges that will need to be overcome to provide a solid product.
It is in these kinds of challenges that Veronte Autopilot thrives, providing great levels of flexibility for control schemes, actuator control mixes and automatic actions. Do you want to keep it simple? Create a hovering mode and a flight mode, then design transitions between both modes. Want to go one step further? Design a hybrid control scheme, then just select a mission, and your aircraft will adapt accordingly, automatically modifying its configuration to suit the current flight conditions.
When other control systems are not enough due to their closed architectures, Veronte provides the user with block-oriented programming tools to design the control scheme your application needs. If you can design it, Veronte will make it fly.
Don’t know where to start? Our integration team has worked on a wide variety of VTOL projects around the world. Their experience and expertise will guarantee that you can take your product to excellence, unlocking Veronte Autopilot’s full potential.
