Never landing drone: Autonomous soaring of a unmanned aerial vehicle in front of a moving obstacle

Increasing endurance is a major challenge for battery-powered aerial vehicles. A method is presented which makes use of an updraft around obstacles to decrease the power consumption of a fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicle. A soaring flight controller has been developed that can autonomously soar while the unmanned aerial vehicle keeps its...

Reliability aspects of software for digital avionics

Modern commercial transport aircraft contain digital avionics systems for more and more safety critical functions. The reliability and safety of those new systems depend on the hardware reliability and on the reliability of the embedded software. In this report, an overview is given of available methods and techniques to develop reliable...