Photo: uAvionix
uAvionix Corp has launched its first autopilot for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), named George.
At 80 grams, George is a low size, weight and power (SWaP) certifiable solution for enterprise operations and those wishing to type certify their UAS. It is manufactured in the United States.
Built around the open-source autopilot Cube from CubePilot, George combines Cube with Design Assurance Level C (DAL-C) hardware and safety and sensor monitoring, enabling customers to meet the type certification and safety case requirements for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.
George’s triple-redundant inertial measurement unit (IMU) system includes three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, three magnetometers and three barometers, one of which has been TSO-certified under TSO-C88b in other uAvionix products such as skyBeacon, tailBeacon and ping200X. The hardware platform is designed and built to RTCA DO-254 DAL-C and meets rigorous DO-160G and MIL-810H power and environmental qualifications.
George is plug-and-play compatible with all of uAvionix’s certified and uncertified products, including
- truFYX GPS (TSO-C145e)
- ping200X (TSO-C112e, TSO-C166b, TSO-C88b)
- RT-2087/ZPX-B (AIMS MkIIB)
- pingRX Pro dual-band ADS-B receiver for detect and avoid
- the microLink or SkyLink C-band command and control solutions
“The flight control capabilities of the Cube are superb, backed by hundreds of thousands of man-hours of engineering and experimentation over the past 10 years,” said Paul Beard, CEO of uAvionix. “But what has been lacking is a hardware platform that matches that capability in robust performance. George brings everything we’ve learned about certified avionics to the autopilot space in a way that outperforms existing enterprise and military autopilots in a lower SWaP package.”
George will be available for beta test-launch customers in June with production units available in the third quarter.