Drones

Auterion and Maxon companions for engines, avionics for drones

The software company Auterion works with the Swiss motor manufacturer maxon

By DRONELIFE Staff Writer Jim Magill

Auterion, a software company that provides an ecosystem of networked drones, payloads and apps, works with the Switzerland-based drive and motor specialist maxon, who is known as the developer of precision systems and enables the autonomous helicopter Ingenuity and Rover Perseverance to achieve the Exploring Mars.

The partnership is expected to create one of the most advanced open source ecosystems for avionics and engine integration in the drone industry. It will combine the use of the Auterion Skynode module and the best BLDC motors in the industry from maxon, such as the flat UAV motor EC 87.

In a joint statement, the companies said the goal of the partnership was “to leverage the expertise of both companies to make it easier for customers to operate, develop and manage fleets of drones at drastically reduced costs.” The two companies said they would “explore long-term opportunities in terms of propulsion systems and autopilot communications, data sharing and real-time monitoring”.

In an interview, Auterion co-founder Kevin Sartori said he was enthusiastic about the opportunities that arise from the partnership with maxon.

“Motors and motor controls are a very important part of a drone system. You keep the drone in the air. And Maxon is the world leader in smaller motors for robotic applications, ”he said.

He added that for many of his US-based customers, it is important that Auterion not work with a China-based engine manufacturer.

“Today most of the engines are made in China. Maxon is a Swiss company; It is made in Switzerland, ”he said.

Marco Safe, maxon business development engineer, said the partnership would give the electric motor manufacturer the ability to leverage its drone propulsion system technology with Auterion’s open source software, which has become the standard for operating drone autopilots.

“We knew that this was not just happening with motors and control electronics, but with an entire propulsion system, an entire ecosystem,” he said.

Maxon has more than six decades of experience in the construction of drive systems, controls, gears and sensors. The high-precision electric motors are used in a number of industries, from aviation to medicine to robotics. They are used to make surgical power tools and humanoid robots.

Maxon is best known around the world for manufacturing technologies used in NASA’s Mars missions. The history of the company with the Mars missions goes back 20 years when maxon developed electric motors for the first Mars rovers.

In the final mission, Maxon plays his biggest role so far. A Maxon motor is part of the mechanism responsible for changing the pitch of the propellers on the Ingenuity autonomous helicopter drone, the first vehicle to fly over the surface of another planet. In addition, maxon’s technology supports many of the laboratory activities that take place on board the Mars rover Perseverance.

Safe said the technology developed by maxon for the Mars missions will eventually be integrated into its more terrestrial products such as drone propulsion systems.

“I always compare it to Formula 1 in the auto industry. It’s the most advanced part of the industry, a niche, but the technology that is being developed there a few years later is making its way into the normal automotive industry, ”he said.

For its role in the new partnership, Auterion is contributing its know-how in the development of complete drone software stacks. The company’s co-founder, Lorenz Meier, developed Pixhawk, an open source autopilot hardware standard, and shaped the PX4 autopilot software, which has become the world’s most widely used open source flight control system for autonomous aircraft.

Auterion’s US-made Skynode, an evolution of the next-generation Pixhawk standard, supports all types of airframes and versatile payloads controlled via an SDK, LTE cloud connectivity, and advanced onboard computation and apps.

“Auterion builds its product on open standards that anyone can use and contribute to because it doesn’t belong to anyone,” said Sartori.

“This partnership – in terms of integrating the engine and engine controls into the autopilot – is done through open standards, so the integration is available to more companies and the availability of components can be scaled to the end user,” he said.

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