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Quattro Flight Management System

The Quattro Flight Management System (FMS) is an industrial grade airborne system composed of the Quattro Autopilot and one or more Quattro Nodes. These core components work in tandem to reduce complexity and weight while enhancing reliability, modularity, and critical mission adaptability.

The Quattro FMS design philosophy is guided by the following priorities:

  • Unparalleled Support
  • Advanced Flight Control
  • Built-in Redundancy
  • Active Diagnostics
  • Test-Driven Development
  • Robust Hardware

Unparalleled Support

Applied Navigation understands the importance of support. 

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The flight management system is a critical part of the unmanned system and often requires bespoke configuration and flight test procedures to reduce risk and achieve the highest levels of confidence and safety.  Applied Navigation provides the complete package: hardware, software, and support.

Our support is best in class.  Applied Navigation engineers have decades of experience with both manned and unmanned flight control, navigation, and flight test.  Our team has supported the first autonomous flights of over 30 unique vehicles including helicopters, fixed wing, and hybrid aircraft.  Our experience ranges from small electric vehicles to gas-powered heavy UAVs weighing over 1000 pounds.  We support our customers with vehicle simulation, initial settings, flight readiness review (FRR), and flight tests.

Advanced Flight Control

Applied Navigation brings proven flight control techniques from manned aviation to the UAS world. 

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A focus on customer requirements has driven our flight control design to put safety and payload first.   The Quattro FMS controller uses forward prediction in time to generate a smooth path to achieve mission objectives while minimizing aircraft acceleration.  This includes all aspects of flight from the rotational motion of the vehicle, to the guidance path needed to fly waypoints, to speed and altitude control. This separation of desired flight path from the controller used to track the path allows the vehicle to be aggressive in fighting wind gusts while still providing the smoothest possible ride for the payload.

Built-in Redundancy

Redundancy and reliability are prioritized starting with the core inertial sensors.

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Triple-redundant, dissimilar inertial sensors enable a wider dynamic measurement range and fault tolerance during normal operation. If a catastrophic sensor failure occurs, the flight controller can fall back to degraded but flightworthy operation.

Input power is also redundant by allowing for failover to an auxiliary power source in the event of an in-flight brownout.

Differential communication busses (including CAN, Ethernet, and RS-485) are utilized to provide reliable communication between critical system components and payloads.

GNSS redundancy ensures reliable navigation from multiple GPS receivers.

Active Diagnostics

Quattro actively monitors its hardware and software health to enhance safety and reliability.

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Diagnostic monitoring begins the moment the Quattro FMS is powered on. At each start-up the system performs self-checks of its hardware components and generates a detailed reset report.

On the ground and during flight,  an extensive array of guidance, navigation, flight control, and health monitoring data is automatically logged to the connected MicroSD card.

Prior to each flight, the embedded controller performs detailed health checks and may automatically abort a pending launch based on pre-programmed abort criteria.

Test Driven Development

Automated testing is at the core of Applied Navigation’s software development approach.

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Simply put, a feature is not considered “done” until that feature is fully exercised by automated simulation tests made possible with our high-fidelity scripted flight simulation engine. Running faster than real-time and with scripting of commands, environment, and failures, this engine provides three core benefits:

  • Fast and thorough software testing (leaving human testing to be exploratory and driven by intuition).
  • The ability to perform operational Monte Carlo testing . Thousands of simulation runs are used to answer questions about the expected performance and operational limits of the system. Questions such as: “what is the expected landing accuracy?” or “what should the takeoff wind limitations be?”.
  • A traceability matrix that links requirements to the unit tests and the individual code sections exercised by these tests.

Robust Hardware

The Quattro FMS is designed from the ground up with hardware modularity and durability in mind.

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The heart of the Quattro FMS is a modern Cortex-M7 32-bit processor providing reliable intra-vehicle high speed differential data transfer via Ethernet. Differential signaling is especially advantageous due to its high noise immunity, so CAN, RS-485, and USB connections are also available.

The dual redundant power inputs are protected from over-voltage, under-volltage, and reverse-voltage conditions and all I/O pins are protected from transient surge events.

BGA components are under-filled to ensure mechanical stability during high acceleration events.

To ensure longevity and reliability, the PCB stack is built to the IPC 6012 Class 3 and IPC-A-600 Class 3 performance and acceptability standards.

Specifications

Physical DimensionsL: 103mm
W: 62mm
H: 24.5mm
Weight122g
Power Consumption4W
Voltage RangePrimary 7-30VDC
Auxiliary 7-30VDC
Primary ConnectorNicomatic 321BR054F50
Cable Connector1Nicomatic 322S054H01
RF ConnectorsSMA x2
USB Connector2USB-C
SD Card Connector2Micro-SD

1. The Nicomatic 322S054H01 is polarity keyed and features captured fasteners for reliable connection.
2. The USB and SD card connectors are placed behind a removable panel at the rear of the enclosure.

Interfaces

I/O
Ethernet
CAN
PWM x16
Serial (TTL or RS232) x2
Serial (RS-232 Only) x2
Serial (RS-232 or RS-485) x1
S.Bus In/Out

Datalink
2.4GHz MIMO Line-of-Sight
Encrypted
STANAG 4586 Compliant

Peripherals
u-blox GPS
NovAtel GPS
Volz Actuators (RS-485)
Quattro Node

Applications

Helicopter
Fixed Wing
Hybrid VTOL

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