Powertrain

Focus on...

ECUs

It wasn’t so long ago that suppliers of ECUs and other control electronics solutions were in something of a tight spot. Pre-COVID ramp-ups in their customers’ production targets had filled ECU makers’ books with contracts, but the sudden freezes that happened...

Dossier

Groupe Danielson Trident 100 TD2 turbodiesel

Just over 10 years ago, we featured Groupe Danielson’s Trident 100 TD2 engine, a 1.1 L, inline three-cylinder turbodiesel designed specifically for the UAV market. Since the company’s 2014 public launch of the Trident series of engines at AUVSI Xponential...

Focus on...

Motor controllers

Until around ten years ago, manufacturers of electric drones were generally stuck with using hobby-grade ESCs (electronic speed controllers) for control of their electric motors. Such low-quality components frequently suffered from issues such as poor transient...

Dossier

Alpha-Otto REV Force

We featured Michigan-based Strange Development in 2020 (see Issue 33), for its two-stroke, inline, two-cylinder, spark-ignited REVolution engine, integrating a rotary exhaust valve (REV) to leverage forced induction when adjusting its dynamic compression ratio...

Dossier

Suter Industries

With regulations in the EU aimed at curbing and eventually eliminating internal combustion engines in road vehicles, the future of European engines – and particularly the expertise and innovative capacity around them – is likely to lie not amidst the automotive...

Platform One

Organic photovoltaic solar cell works in space

Researchers in the US have developed a flexible, organic, photovoltaic (OPV) solar cell that functions well in space. Space missions often decide on gallium arsenide for its high efficiency and resistance to damage from protons, but it is expensive...

Dossier

Honeywell 600U, 600U-HV and 1200U fuel cells

In UST 14 (June/July 2017) we featured the hydrogen fuel cell from the Protonex Technology Corporation, which at the time was principally used by Insitu...

Digest

New take on stability

Orthodrone is developing a multicopter technology it calls Pivot, which embodies the radical concept of stabilising the entire fuselage while the propulsion system moves around it to compensate for wind coming from any direction. The purpose of this departure from convention is...