Innovative unmanned airship: Avionics and power supply development

The present work describes, divided into two parts, the development process of the on board avionics, at first, and then of the power supply and electric system of a low speed, low altitude advanced unmanned platform, named Elettra Twin Flyers, which should be employed for reconnaissance, monitoring and telecommunication purposes both in military and civil area. This innovative remotely-piloted airship has been designed and patented by Nautilus S.p.A. and equipped with high precision sensors and communication devices by Galileo Avionica and Selex Communication. For technical and commercial reason a lowcost-high-fidelity Flight Simulator has been also implemented and used to develop a new Ground Station Concept. In particular, the paper focuses on the strong design integration, especially required by the unconventional characteristics of the airship, among the flight controls, the electric power generation and distribution, and the avionic systems. To cut down costs and development time, the avionics of the prototype has been conceived by integrating both aerospace qualified and COTS devices. The use of COTS Inertial Measuring Unit based on MEMS technology, that is getting more and more precise and reliable, has also contributed to the reduction of the avionics weight. A particular subject has been the choice of the digital data network architecture in order to come to a necessary balance between flexibility ad modularity, needed for the prototype development, and complexity in software coding. Copyright © 2005 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. All rights reserved.