In some sectors there are vehicles or aircrafts used for manned operations, but sometimes those missions become monotone or dangerous for the crew, such as firefighting or military maneuvers, among others. The risk of these hazardous operations can be reduced to zero while improving their efficiency if they are performed by autonomous unmanned vehicles / aircrafts. Nowadays it is possible to convert into a drone any vehicle just installing the appropriate components.
The necessary equipment to convert into a drone a vehicle or aircraft can be considered in two groups: firstly, the aircraft should be equipped with an avionics system such as a UAVs autopilot and components that receive the orders sent by the autopilot, such as servos, lineal actuators, motors…
With professional GPS sensors, to convert into a drone an aircraft would permit to enhance its navigation accuracy, reaching centimeter precision through the use of RTK and RTCM technology, as well as it would increase flights safety and operations would be easily automated with maneuvers such as “Go Home” and so on.
Secondly, in order to convert into a drone any vehicle, it is necessary to have a control station, which would let us to manage and pre-program operations to be done by the drone. Control stations have three main parts: a computer, tablet or cellphone that would execute the control software of the avionics system; a control electronics to communicate with the drone and, if necessary, a joystick for manual control of the unmanned vehicle either to manually inspect a specific area or to perform specific missions with strict legal requirements.
Convert into a drone any vehicle using Veronte Autopilot
In order to convert into a drone any vehicle, Veronte Autopilot integration permits to incorporate advanced control functionalities and autonomous flights. It is an avionics system for professional purposes, and the whole system consists of an onboard avionics unit, control electronics for control stations and a tailored control software: Veronte Pipe.
Veronte Autopilot embeds radio modules to allow 4G communications for LOS (Line of Sight) and BLOS (Beyond Line of Sight) operations. It includes the possibility of adding other modules to be suited for any professional and advanced operation: satellite communications, system control for electronic fuel injection motors, payload management for specific operations and so on.
To sum up, Veronte Autopilot is the most suitable avionics system to convert into a drone any vehicle or aircraft. It is highly reliable due to more than ten years of development and implementation in different platforms such as helicopters, sea moving targets, airships, parafoils, large airplanes and a vast number of small aircrafts or drones.