The requirements for the operation of unmanned aircrafts for commercial and semi-professional purposes have changed fundamentally in the past years in Europe and worldwide.
The regulations will get even more strictly in the future.
Depending on the application, the weight, the purpose, the situation, the flight area, spectators and some more reasons, SAFETY is becoming increasingly important.
Even if one repeatedly hears times here and there by the aviation authorities that they grant special rights for certain user groups (e.g. film industry, logistic companies…), so it is at the end the insurance, which restricts a project or even makes it impossible.
Please check also a statement from Poms & Associates:
Single point of failure and redundancy became one of the leading keywords for permissions and certifications from authorities and insurances.
Among other parts inside a system, redundancy of the autopilot system is meanwhile mandatory to follow the rules (here in Austria…other States will follow), especially for multicopters. They are very instable in their flight characteristics when it comes to malfunction of the stabilization system.
We therefore developed a redundancy circuit board which is an intelligent and automatic monitoring and controlling bridge between two independent running autopilot systems, a mutual protection in case of malfunction in an autopilot system.
Even if both autopilots fail (power supply, freezing controller…), the forwarding of the control signals for a manual flight of the aircraft or helicopter (not recommended for multicopters) is granted.
This system also offers the possibility to switch manually between two different autopilot systems to test different software and system setups. The data of each autopilot system can be monitored and changed during the flight separately Another benefit of the AP-Manager (this is the name of the upcoming product) is that for the most autopilots only one telemetry module is needed to monitor data of both autopilot systems (except DJI).
Hence the AP-Manager© is the perfect companion to test the most recent updates or new parameter upgrades for your autopilot systems.
Currently, these autopilot systems have been tested successfully:
• Ardupilots 2.5/ 2.6
• PX4 Pixhawk
• DJI NAZA V2
• MikroKopter Flight Ctrl ME 2.1
Basically there is no reason that other autopilot systems from other manufacturers won’t work. The board has been designed that all ports are compatible with the common used autopilot systems.
My name is Robert Hoermann and I am the managing director of GIZMOtec Ltd. in Austria.
We will start our campaign within the next 10 days to fund the AP-Manager to share this idea and benefits to the large community of unmanned systems and RC models.
We would like to invite you to visit our new website on www.GIZMOtec.eu (sorry, some construction is still in progress) to enter for a newsletter to be one of the first parties to get informed, when the Indiegogo campaign will start.
We also implemented some first FAQ's and a discussion forum.
When starting the Indiegogo campaign we will also provide a “limited early bird” offer.
Thank you for joining us.
With very best regards,
Robert
Comments
Can we use it for transition from multicopter to Plane in VTOL having two autopilot ?
I fly a big octo that I have outfitted for dual operator. My camera op has a Spektrum DX8, and in an emergency, I'd love for him to be able to take the helm with that transmitter and fly the copter home. Of course, that's impossible right now, but in a truly well-designed redundant scenario, why not? After all, wouldn't we all love to have a copilot on demand?
Thank you for your comments.
@Steve, I totally agree to you. If you start to think in the best possible redundancy of all systems (electronics and mechanics), cable and mechanical reinforcements then can end up probably in a flying dumpling with a max. flight time of 2 minutes ... :-). But to be realistic, some of the double design of the autopilot could also be a single energization of each autopilot, with a redundant power feeding of the AP-manager. The variations in redundancy can vary.
@Julien, of course you can take different autopilot systems and manually (or in case of emergency automatically) switch between both system. Only limitation is the parallel switching with only one telemetry channel. This will unfortunately not functioning with the DJY system. So here you need for each autopilot an individual telemetry link. Inside the ardupilot family (PX4 included) only one downlink is enough. Furthermore, e.g. if you fly in the test state with a manual switching between the autopilots you can fly on AP1 and parallel you can have a look in the mission planner what AP2 is doing before you then really switch to AP2.
Regards Robert
Great project, that's a good first step in general safety improvement.
Is your AP-Manager able to switch from, eg, a DJI Naza to a PixHawk or only between 2 same controllers?
My own analysis of failures from many crashes and near crashes (some mine, many of others) indicates that the #2 cause of failures is related to power systems, not guidance systems. I'd like to see a truly redundant power system with dual batteries and two sets of ESCs, where either of the power paths is capable of flying the copter, and both are independent of the other. Of course, the #1 cause of failures is pilot error, and redundancy in that area is complicated. When human ego is part of the equation, we're all doomed. But I digress...
This project looks quite interesting, I look forward to reading the details.
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