How Urban Air Mobility is getting ready for passengers: the NTU Singapore case
Singapore’s NTU flew its eVTOL prototypes in Germany. See what it means for urban air mobility, and why safety starts in flight control.
The Spanish company Embention Sistemas Inteligentes has co-imparted the UAV Certification Course (Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles) on the 20th and 21st of April 2015, along with Everis Aerospace and Defense, Aernova, Evercare, and the Spanish Association of RPAS (AERPAS), in order to train participants in the certification process and its critical points, essential for UAVs weighing over 25 kg. The course encompassed theoretical points of procedure for UAV certification; however, it took a mainly practical approach by applying previous experience in the certification procedure.
The UAV certification course was developed to comply with current professional demands in the aviation sector. With it, the attendees were able to improve their knowledge on UAV certification, meet the state of the art and current situation of the UAV, and know the rules relating to hardware and software design from a technical standpoint.
This didactic activity was based on the skills and practices acquired by these companies during the first RPAS for civilian use certification, granted by the State Agency of Safety Aviation (AESA). Procedure that has meant more than a year of effort and has enabled these companies to be pioneers in the civil certification of this aircraft archetype.
Veronte Autopilot 1x, entirely developed by Embention, is installed in the FT-Altea aircraft (80 kg) in its triple redundancy version, being the first RPAS platform with a civil airworthiness certificate in Europe. This flight control system for UAVs and drones has a number of additional qualities that make a difference: RTK precise positioning, digital video transmission, onboard image processing (see & avoid), evidence of compliance for DO178B/C/EED-12, DO254, DO160G, adaptive control, configurable phases and control channels, path tracking, FDR, 64 UAVs, FTS, double and triple redundancy, etc.
UAV Certification course, topics discussed:
- Introduction to the UAV certification.
- Structures: process, regulations, certification requirements, time to market, and associated costs.
- Software: DO178B/C/EED-12, life cycle of software safety and reliability, qualification, analysis, certification, and demonstration.
- Hardware: DO254, requirements, redundancy and dissimilarity, methods of compliance, evidence, qualification, essays, and DDP.
