Pulse Aerospace Announces the wePilot3000 Redundant Flight Control System for VTOL UAS
Pulse Aerospace, Inc., the Kansas based unmanned helicopter manufacturer and supplier of unmanned helicopter automatic flight control systems, announces today the release of the weControl wePilot3000 redundant, and full authority, digital flight control system for its North American customers. The wePilot3000 is primarily aimed at the rapidly accelerating helicopter UAV industry, but also with the peripherals, controller architecture, and I/O to provide custom autopilot solutions for fixed wing UAVs.
The wePilot3000 leverages a decade of excellence in providing navigation, guidance, and control to the world’s premier UAV helicopter manufacturers and development programs. The integration and Robust controller synthesis efforts are led in the U.S. by Pulse Aerospace Inc.; and in Europe, by the autopilot’s firmware developer and hardware manufacturer, weControl SA. The wePilot3000, in contrast to its predecessor the wePilot1000, provides a redundant flight control system capability designed for helicopter UAS with a MTOW of 20lbs to 1100lbs. “For R&D purposes, as well as many military applications, single thread digital flight control systems have become standard among SUAS OEM’s,” said Bill Donovan, cofounder of Pulse Aerospace “This is simply not acceptable, nor safe for larger platforms, carrying more costly payloads such as agricultural chemicals, LiDAR, Radar, and hyperspectral imagers. Safety is being stressed, on several fronts, as we move forward with the integration of UAS in the NAS, and the wePilot3000 is a large step forward for aircraft we see already flying today in military and R&D applications.”
The autopilot is available in a single or dual CPU version. The dual CPU version consists of two CPUs in an FPGA controlled master/slave architecture, two GPS/Glonass receivers, a redundant 5-axis pyramidal core inertial measurement unit, two magnetometers, as well as air data sensing. The Single CPU version comes standard with high grade 3-axis IMU. Each is available with or without GPS heading. The wePilot3000’s standard safety modes and redundancies consist of automatic pseudo-autorotation, automatic detection and mode switching for GPS jammed/denied situations, GPS+Glonass constellation connectivity, automatic homing, and others; it is packaged in a lightweight and low power, redundant CPU and navigation suite.
While the wePilot3000 is capable of controlling fixed and rotary wing platforms, it is ideally suited to traditional helicopter configurations. “You can see that small multi-rotor helicopters can work well for small payloads less than 5 lbs” said a Pulse Aerospace Inc. spokesperson, “However, for medium and large sized payloads, or applications which require higher efficiency or more accurate positioning, the traditional helicopter design is the preferred configuration. The problem is that sensitivity and coupling control challenges exist with traditional helicopters that must be solved with higher grade sensing and navigation in concert with formal and advanced control architectures and methods. That is where the wePilot and our integration techniques are best demonstrated.” The wePilot line of autopilots and advanced integration technologies, have been deployed over a ten year period to demonstrate robust multivariable helicopter control. When combined with superior manufacturing quality, a feature rich and modern interface, and an assortment of industry leading safety modes and redundancies, the result is a product that will add significant redundancy and reliability to commercial and industrial UAV designs, both in fixed-wing and helicopter configurations.
For more information on the wePilot3000 visit www.pulseaero.com or email contact@pulseaero.com.
