Inexpensive Fault Tolerant Composable Unmanned Aircraft Systems Avionics

Windhover Labs proposes to create an inexpensive fault tolerant avionics package for Groups 1 and 2 Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) (less than 55 lbs).nbsp; Windhover Labs has already developed an open-source flight software backbone and ecosystem, called Airliner, built upon Core Flight System (CFS) created by NASA, with a path to FAA certification.nbsp; The new avionics will have 2 sets of computing cores. One high speed set of cores running Linux and hosting non-critical software.nbsp; The other computing cores run in lock-step and host critical software. The two zones of criticality execute completely separate operating systems, preventing faults from crossing zones and allowing zones to be reset independently of one another.nbsp; The avionics package also includes an Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), allowing limitless extensibility. Combined, the platform provides maximum flexibility with reconfigurable hardware and high speed computing as well as maximum reliability with a lock-step processor, all in a low cost package about the size of a deck of playing cards.nbsp;In addition to the increased safety and flexibility, this proposal also includes integration of NASArsquo;s Autonomy Operating System (AOS) directly into Airliner as native applications, providing Airliner a path to Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) integration.nbsp; This proposal makes this possible with the increased performance, with no sacrifice in safety. Current avionics platforms capable of running Airliner flight software take up to 80% of the processing power performing just minimal stable flight. The proposed avionics has up to an 1100% increase in performance, depending on the configuration, providing ample processing power to run both Airliner and AOS with margin to spare for growth and additional functionality.nbsp; Integration with AOS not only provides a significant increase in functionality, but the development process of AOS fits well with the Airliner development, providing a smooth path to FAA certification.