36 Unlike its AR5 sibling, the AR3 relies on a single engine, meaning that redundancy at that level isn’t an option; however, in such cases, the policy is to keep using better and better components. “There’s a balance between really partnering deeply with your supply chain, while at the same time keeping resilience in the supply chain by using multiple suppliers,” he notes. On servos, for example, they work closely with Volz but also use other suppliers. Nunes adds that design and component selection for critical avionics, such as control system components, are driven by failure analysis. “We know there are a lot of servos that are not designed for aviation, so we spend a lot of time refining designs to increase our resilience to these small failures. That’s why we design in redundancy.” He explains that there are many aspects of CAN and other communications protocols that are driven by failure mode analysis to make them more reliable. Coupled with redundancy from the power regulator in the electronics extending through the power and control lines to the actuators, this will increase the reliability of the system, so Tekever’s flight control systems are designed this way. The engineering team also puts a lot of effort into validating actuators, choosing the best they can find and then conducting rigorous tests to determine the mean time between failures of each. “And we find Volz to be one of the best on the market.” Redundancy inevitably adds cost, weight and complexity to the system, but that is one of the perennial engineering trade-offs, as Nunes admits. “There is more wiring in the wings and the tail than I would like, but it pays off because it increases the reliability of the system.” Denied environments Navigation and communication in an environment in which the adversary has a panoply of mobile ground-based and airborne jamming systems is difficult, but Tekever has integrated some technologies to mitigate the problem into the AR3 and is working on more. For example, they already use controlled reception pattern antennas, which only receive signals coming from certain directions, enabling them to reject ground-based jammers. “But there comes a point where there are too many jammers,” Nunes admits. Airborne and even satellite-based jammers are even more difficult to manage because their signals come from above, just like real GNSS signals. VBN and SAR navigation The inertial navigation system can help for short periods, but all such systems are subject to drift. This is where a variety of other techniques, including visual-based navigation (VBN) come in, with some already in use on the AR3. Initial solutions centre on VBN, processing inputs from dedicated or gimbal-mounted EO cameras. The UAV correlates captured imagery with onboard maps to determine position and orientation. However, VBN’s effectiveness is inherently tied to environmental conditions, Mendes explains. “We’re already processing VBN onboard in real time,” he says, “but it’s limited – we are heavily dependent on good visual inputs, so we are extending VBN to work with thermal imagery.” Thermal navigation introduces challenges in that the lower information density in thermal imagery complicates feature extraction and matching, demanding more sophisticated algorithms to maintain navigation fidelity. To overcome visual limitations, August/September 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Several powerplant options are available, and Tekever is working with several major engine manufacturers so that factors such as power, specific fuel consumption and electrical power supplies can be tailored Self-contained, hot-swappable electric VTOL modules now fit between wing sections rather than on attachment points underneath the wings, improving aerodynamics
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