Embention launches Veronte Autopilot 4x flight controller for eVTOL aircraft certification

High-tech­nol­o­gy firm Emben­tion is using its 15 years of expe­ri­ence in the unmanned air­craft sys­tems (UAV) mar­ket to launch its Veronte Autopi­lot 4x, a redun­dant flight con­troller which is ready for eVTOL air­craft cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Accord­ing to the com­pa­ny’s web­site, the sys­tem offers a com­pact solu­tion which is capa­ble of con­trol­ling any unmanned vehi­cle, such as fixed-wing, mul­ti­ro­tor and hybrid VTOL air­craft.

In a press release talk­ing more about the prod­uct, the com­pa­ny said: “The eVTOL indus­try is ris­ing and we are rapid­ly dis­cov­er­ing a wide vari­ety of new eVTOL air­craft designs that will be oper­a­tive very soon per­form­ing manned flights fly­ing over traf­fic jams and over the cities.

“It is well known that one of the main chal­lenges that the eVTOL sys­tems are fac­ing, is to ensure the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the oper­a­tion at the time that a rea­son­able cost per vehi­cle is kept.

“For this, ​Emben­tion ha​s brought its wide expe­ri­ence work­ing in the UAV mar­ket to deliv­er Veronte Autopi­lot 4x for eVTOL, a redun­dant flight con­troller ready for eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.”

Veronte Autopi­lot 4x has been designed accord­ing to the DO178C and DO245 air­craft stan­dards for on-board soft­ware and hard­ware design with DAL B com­pli­ance lev­el. It pro­vides a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion dat­a­pack includ­ing autopi­lot reli­a­bil­i­ty evi­dence need­ed for pass­ing a eVTOL cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process.

It embeds three redun­dant autopi­lot cores, being pos­si­ble to con­nect an exter­nal 4th autopi­lot core for advanced con­fig­u­ra­tions. All this, man­aged by a dis­sim­i­lar arbiter micro­proces­sor run­ning vot­ing algo­rithms for select­ing the autopi­lot core in charge of the eVTOL con­trol at any time.

One of the key fac­tors in Veronte Autopi­lot 4x is that it has also been designed in the way that there is no sin­gle point of fail­ure. Even in the event of an arbiter fail­ure, the autopi­lot will remain oper­a­tive for eVTOL con­trol.

“Man­u­fac­tur­ing qual­i­ty assur­ance is also a must when we talk about safe­ty,” the com­pa­ny added.

“Emben­tion has set up a set of pro­ce­dures for ensur­ing the reli­a­bil­i­ty in the pro­duc­tion process. ​Envi­ron­men­tal Stress Screen­ing (ESS) ​process­es sub­jects to all pro­duced autopi­lot units to vibra­tions and tem­per­a­ture stress in order to force the ear­ly fail­ure of defec­tive units. This process ensures the extend­ed life­time of the autopi­lot for eVTOL.

“The flex­i­bil­i­ty giv­en by the Veronte Autopi­lot 4x pro­vides the air­craft inte­gra­tor with tools for adapt­ing autopi­lot per­for­mance to the needs of all kinds of eVTOL vehi­cles with­out requir­ing to mod­i­fy the source code. At the same time, Veronte Autopi­lot 4x can be con­fig­ured for includ­ing cus­tom con­trol modes, such as ful­ly autonomous flight con­trol or fly-by-wire mode.”

Once eVTOL air­craft will be oper­a­tional and over our heads, Emben­tion has said they will be con­nect­ed to the LTE net­work for shar­ing infor­ma­tion and get­ting weath­er and traf­fic data. For this, the Veronte Autopi­lot 4x includes a 4G com­mu­ni­ca­tions mod­ule and Emben­tion is already explor­ing 5G options.

Emben­tion has said that this, togeth­er with the ADS‑B IN & OUT mod­ule embed­ded in the Veronte Autopi­lot 4x makes it ready for ATC / UTM inte­gra­tion of eVTOL air­craft in cities.

Found­ed in 2007, Emben­tion devel­ops com­po­nents and crit­i­cal sys­tems for drones and eVTOL air­craft. For more infor­ma­tion about the Veronte Autopi­lot 4x, vis­it www.embention.com