Avionics control systems used on drones usually incorporate failproof mechanisms, with automations such as “Go Home” or emergency landing that are activated after a system failure. However, these systems are not totally safe and sometimes flights suffer some kind of error, resulting on the need for many drones of a redundant autopilot able to lower at the minimum the possibility of a system failure.
Due to this, it’s more reasonable to use redundant autopilots to increase the safety of high cost drones or payloads of similar value. At the same time, it has to be considered that if our drone weight is over 25 kg (+- 55 lb), avionics rules become stricter, being essential to have a failproof avionics system.
Redundant Autopilot Veronte
Within the range of products of Veronte Autopilot, it can be found its triple redundant version. This redundant autopilot is formed by three autopilots controlled by an arbiter, and it’s even possible to add a fourth external autopilot to increase the dissimilarity of this device. With a Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of 10^7 hours, this autopilot accomplishes with the tightness standard IP67 through an anodized aluminum enclosure for EMI and EMC isolation.
The Veronte Redundant Autopilot has, between other components, 6 three axis accelerometers, 6 three axis gyroscopes, 3 three axis magnetometers, 6 barometers and 6 GPS receivers (for heading estimation based on the GPS), between others. In addition, it includes a wide range of ports: CAN, serial, PWM, GPIO, analogic inputs including critical ports for flight control and critic functions, as well as others for auxiliary systems for payloads.
This great reliability and redundancy capacity of the Veronte Autopilot makes of it one of the most reliable autopilots in the market. Currently, it has been included on different projects for flights over populated areas, such as delivery services, surveillance and support for emergencies such as the Defidrone project, from the Tizino Cuore foundation.