Avior Labs

Thank you to defenceWeb for the feature🇿🇦 at the African Aerospace and Defence Exhibition 2022

We are in Hangar 1 at the African Aerospace and Defense Exhibition 2022

What are fixed-wing VTOL drones? How do they compare with multicopter drones?

We will be showcasing our new fixed-wing VTOL drone called Elevation! Come chat to us and find out what Elevation and our other services can offer you ✨

Meet Sky Eye✨ our fixed-wing test platform.

Our Universal Simulation Environment (USE) is a C++ based simulation environment developed entirely in-house. It is the culmination of our experience using many proprietary, open source and commercial simulation tools over a period of several decades.

Our environment was developed from the conceptual stage to be modular, provide networked simulation capabilities and to allow high performance desktop simulation for both faster-than-realtime and realtime applications.

After decades in the military aerospace industry, two of our founders, Bennie Broughton and Kreelan Padayachee, contemplated the question of how to apply that experience and cutting-edge technologies to solve everyday problems.

They combined their vision with the business qualifications and development economics background of our third founder, Elena Broughton, to create a new company dedicated to providing unmanned aerial solutions and associated technologies for the aerospace industry.

We specifically wanted to focus on commercial and humanitarian applications such as surveying, monitoring and last mile delivery of medical supplies. Ultimately, the aim was to better society through smart flight technologies or, as our motto says: “Simplify life through flight”.

Our engineers have extensive experience in the military and civilian aerospace industries, and in particular in research and development. In addition to our UAV platforms, we offer specialist aeronautical engineering services in a number of fields.

Our 💯

1. We question conventional thinking and subscribe to purposeful creativity. We listen to our clients – not every requirement will need a new platform.

2. If what we already have suits our clients’ performance objectives, we customise the payload and functionality to their needs.

3. Our airframes are designed to be scalable to minimise the development time required to accommodate bigger payloads or longer endurance and range.

4. For very unique requirements, our experienced team walks the entire journey with a client from formalising their requirement to producing the final product that will give their organisation a competitive advantage.

LAUNCH OF DRONE PROFESSIONAL 2

Andre P. Meredith, Senior Staff Officer Air Certification (SA Air Force), Associate at Avior Labs (Pty) Ltd (drone safety and risk assessment), licensed drone pilot and author of The Drone Safety Handbook, announces the launch of the new #1 best-seller on Amazon (USA and Germany): Drone Professional 2.

Drone Professional 2 features compelling articles from 21 drone industry professionals from around the world. They share their experience, insights, best practice guidance and current best thinking on a broad range of topics in unmanned aviation.

Topics covered include start-up stories from surveying services to drone manufacturing; risk assessment; drone insurance; environmental planning; surveillance and security; drones and satellites; land use planning; Unmanned Traffic Management; team work; artificial intelligence; safety in operations; best practice guidelines near wildlife; applications in the energy industries; regulations; the ‘Power of Local’; crop spraying; marketing services; and diversity in the industry.

Drone Professional 2 is an invaluable resource and practical reference guide for those in the drone industry and for those who are new to, or interested in engaging with, the drone industry. It is an impeccable resource because it combines both technical and personal anecdotal feedback from frontline experts. Each of the experts contributing to Drone Professional 2 are consummate professionals in the drone community.

Get your copy on https://www.amazon.com/Drone-Professional-2-Louise-Jupp/dp/1912774798.

Are you a third-year at a South African university interested in gaining experience during the December holidays while working next to highly experienced aeronautical engineers? We have a single available for that period at our Centurion offices. Check our website for more details: https://aviorlabs.com/internship-available/

FIRST STARDUST OUT OF THE MOULD

Anyone who has done composite manufacturing in a closed mould will understand the excitement of that moment when you pull the first part out of a new mould. Last week, that moment came for our first Stardust prototype. As usual, there were some bated breaths as we opened the mould to see if the parts would come out as planned. We are happy to announce that it all went according to plan!

Elsewhere on our website one can find more information on our Stardust technology demonstrator. This airframe was conceived as a platform to expand a number of our capabilities, including our hardware-in-the-loop simulation lab and the control of airframes with marginal stability or less-than-ideal handling qualities. According to our analysis and simulations, the airframe will require significant stability and control augmentation. Soon we will be able to examine the outcome of our efforts when the flight test programme starts.

The Stardust airframe also has some interesting construction challenges. In particular, we have set ourselves very tight structural weight goals, which required careful design and accurate manufacturing. We are happy to announce that we were within 2% of the projected weight. Admittedly, even we were a little surprised at how close we were! Another interesting challenge was the split flaps, which will simultaneously serve as spoilers, ailerons, and rudders. These are very thin, must meet perfectly halfway between the upper and lower surfaces, yet be stiff enough to handle the aerodynamic loads. Watch this space for a video on how they work as soon as we have integrated all the electronics.

THE DRONE SAFETY HANDBOOK

Our associate Andre Meredith recently published this fantastic must-have book. For those contemplating operating their own drones, whether to be used commercially or only as a hobby, this book will help you understand the environment in which you operate much better. Most of all, it will help you ensure that you get the most out of your drone without hurting yourself or others, and to minimize the chances of inadvertently destroying that rather expensive investment.

The book contains interesting background about drones and aviation safety and will then take you through the risk assessment process step by step. It has several sections dealing with risk assessments for commercial operators, recreational operators and for those of us who actually develop drones. As a bonus, you will also find lots of useful supporting material on the book’s website – for free! Check it out and order your copy now:

https://www.mysafedrone.co.za/dshbTHE DRONE SAFETY HANDBOOK

IT'S LIVE!

Our website has gone live after a lot of work behind the scenes. We hope that visitors to our site will come back regularly to share in our passion and excitement for what we do.

In this news section, we intend to regularly post small updates on the many projects that our company is involved in. We believe many of our visitors will be surprised to see just how much we have to offer. Check in regularly – we’ll try to have something new at least every few weeks.

Whether you are interested in an unmanned solution for your business, require help with an aeronautical engineering problem or are a young engineer looking for a potential career – please browse through our website and contact us if we piqued your interest.