86 Razvan Sabie. “It can also accelerate very quickly. Combined, these qualities lend it towards various high-speed transportation applications.” A scale model was displayed at the company’s stand, although Sabie said the full-scale ADIFO prototype is about 1.5 m in diameter. The airframe has four electric, vertically disposed ducted fans in the saucer-shaped airframe, as well as three small tilting jet engines. When tilted horizontally, the engines’ shrouds conform with the hull shape, and achieve intake and exhaust using vents at the sides of the craft for horizontal forward thrust. The vents also act as effector vanes or nozzles for yaw, roll and pitch. The fans provide stabilisation during transition, as well as some extra manoeuvrability during flight. Also attending the show was aeRotate, a producer of battery packs with integrated BMSs, to showcase its aeroPAX6 Smart Battery. “This battery is programmed to communicate via DroneCAN, enabling it to be plug and play with any Ardupilot-based flight controllers,” said Johanna Glutting. “The BMS provides a hot-swap ability for parallel battery set-ups, while also monitoring and logging data on cell voltages, cell temperatures, SoC and other parameters.” The aeroPAX6 is a lithium-polymer battery pack with a quick-swap adapter, making it possible to swap the battery within seconds. It has a 16,000 mAh maximum capacity, 266.4 kWh nominal storage, 22.2 V DC nominal supply, up to 60 A continuous discharge current (250 A peak) and weighs 2138 g. The pre-charge circuitry prevents sparking when users power up their UAVs. Additional software functions include a ‘storage’ mode, which can be activated to preserve the health of the battery during long periods of inactivity. Piran Advanced Composites displayed a number of parts on its stand as examples of different geometries, thicknesses and complexities it can produce using its carbon composite manufacturing capabilities. “One of the UAV markets we’re able to supply to for instance is HAPS or HALE aircraft,” said Marcus Royle. “You can see here several examples of the level of lightweight carbon fibres we use, which make our parts suitable for HAPS and their structural components. “Typical lightweight composites used in motorsport, automotive and conventional aerospace would be around 200 g/m2 per layer. Thanks to a very specialised supplier we’re partnered with, we can go down to 20 g/m2 per layer.” The company’s resin systems cover a broad range of industry-standard components, with some key knowhow lying in the combination of standard resins with a range of prepreg materials and less-often used lightweight fibres. Airvolute attended the expo to showcase its DroneCore 2.0 autopilot, which can be built around Cube’s Orange+ flight controller or its Blue H7, along with an Nvidia Jetson Orin NX to enable AI support of UAV navigation and mission planning. “As well as designing it for mass manufacture, we’ve also optimised it for light weight and redundancy,” explained Lukas Palkovic. “It weighs 153 g, and while the Cube is the primary flight controller, an STM32H7 FMU is also installed as a secondary or back-up autopilot, although that latter unit can also be used as the primary autopilot if the user wishes. “It also integrates a network switch for Ethernet, as well as several USB UARTs, and MIPI camera ports. A wi-fi module is also integrated on board, and in general we’ve designed the whole product with an open source architecture and a high level of modularity. “The integrators can therefore perform their own redesigns, like replacing our connectors with their preferred connectors or integrating various adapters, which usually need separate boards. The same can be done with the power distribution board. Now, everything can be placed in one unit with minimum cabling.” Palkovic added that the DroneCore 2.0 comes with Airvolute’s software features, which at the moment include visual odometry, support for different gimbals and automated gimbal pointing and tracking. Other features will be added as the company’s software library set grows. “That frees up developers’ attention to concentrate on optimising their UAVs for user applications, rather than getting lost in writing software for lower-level functionalities,” he noted. The DroneCore 2.0 measures 119.5 x 51 x 41 mm. As well as the various CAN, Ethernet and serial buses available to the Cube, STM and Nvidia computers in the system, it also features Airvolute’s DroneCore power distribution board. This has a power switch and power sensor as well as four motor power pads December/January 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology aeRotate’s aeroPax6 smart battery
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