Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM) researchers have developed module technology of flight controller for unmanned aerial vehicles called as EDRONES.
“EDRONES is a flight controller module for drones that is made independently with autonomous abilities depending on the given mission,” said Dr. Andi Dharmawan, S.Si., M.Cs., developer of EDRONES, recently.
The flight controller is designed for various types of drone or UAV, including multirotor, fixed wing and Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL). It is built on microcontroller production of STMicroelectronics from SMT32F4 and also companion computer of Banana M2 Zero.
Andi explained the flight controller has two different features for each drone or UAV. For the fixed wing type it is equipped with stabiliser, altitude hold, heading lock, and autonomous navigation while for multirotor it has stabilisers, altitude hold, heading lock, and way point.
“For the VTOL it is equipped with features such as stabilisers, altitude hold, position hold, and hybrid mode,” said the Electronics and Instrumentation lecturer.
The autopilot EDRONES has good features such as compatibility with different vehicles and most of the components are made domestically. It can also be integrated with a single board computer that supports Artificial Intelligence.
“In addition, we have developed the control system algorithm independently from scratch,” he explained, adding this was done together with researchers from the Electronics and Instrumentation study programme at UGM. Meanwhile, maintenance and aftersales is easy to do. Besides, users should not worry about data theft from abroad.