Flight safety improvements for small size unmanned aerial vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles from micro to large scale are a common research topic in the latest years. Small size (under 3 m wingspan and between 1-15 kg all up weight) UAVs and the autopilots usually have no redundancy and have been not prepared for emergency situations. Loss of control, power management, engine or a faulty sensor could cause serious damage. To prevent the disaster many things must be considered and added to the UAV such as redundant manual and autonomous controller, fault detection and isolation subsystem (FDI) or bearing and position estimation. The AERObot autopilot was developed at Obuda University for research purposes using multiple flight safety improvement methods.