58 Digest | RigiTech Eiger UAV map showing their geographical spread, or a table of them listed with real-time health parameters, allows you to see at least four or five Eiger UAVs at once, and if one has an issue, a prescribed safety behaviour kicks in, limiting the need for fleet managers to step in.” The safety landing paths and points (called ‘rally points’ internally) are specified by operators, selected along the route after it has been generated, with open fields and parking lots often being acceptable emergency landing places. Several must be chosen at regular distances, given that one of the riskiest causes for an emergency landing is the loss of fixed-wing flight, and switching to multicopter mode entails a significantly shorter flight time, given the power needed by the four lift motors. The user must define their autonomous safety behaviour – how the UAV will react to different faults or hazards. For instance, if a strong weather pattern is detected (as can be done via ADS-B In), it can choose to return home, land at a rally point or continue its mission. “When it comes to the landing itself, a lot of people say they do vision- or Lidar-based landing, but if you want reliable landing, which lands 100% of the time and not just 80-90% of the time, that’s actually a huge amount of work,” Klaptocz notes. “We wrote all of our own vision- and Lidar-based landing algorithms from scratch, such that our system uses a dozen different markers to triangulate its descent robustly, regardless of any situation-specific variables that might throw off less wellengineered landing software.” SAIL away RigiTech continues to develop Eiger’s place within the SORA framework. As of writing, the UAV is classed under Specific Assurance Integrity Level (SAIL) 2, enabling it to fly low-risk routes, as defined by the EU, although the company is working on gaining clearances to fly SAIL 3 medium-risk routes. “We’ve measured the MTBF of all our critical components, and our engineering is definitely compatible with SAIL 3. We’re working with our regulator in Switzerland and with those of our clients, so that in the coming months we will have a SAIL 3 update package for Eiger that all of our customers will be able to use, and that’ll include that MTBF data,” Kaptocz says. In addition to expanding into new markets (including its first few launch customers in the US, to be announced soon), RigiTech is pursuing its ultimate goal of more automation and less handson involvement by humans. The company notes that some of its customers no longer even touch the drone on a day-to-day basis. Hospitals and clinics load and unload their Eigers, and perform battery replacements. “There are ways to further automate the ground-related aspects of the UAV, such as placing camera arms around some landing points for remote – and maybe even machine-automated – visual checks, because removing the need for direct human involvement is the essential business case by which logistics can scale,” Klaptocz says. “We will achieve a lot of that through software, as well as a few new hardware products we’ve got cooking in our pipeline.” April/May 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Eiger VTOL-transitioning Fixed-wing/quadrotor hybrid Battery-electric Cloud-based GCS Dimensions: 268 cm x 164 cm x 42 cm MTOW: 22 kg Payload weight capacity: 3 kg Payload volume capacity: 15 L (45 cm x 16 cm x 21 cm) Cruising speed: 104 kph Maximum gust resistance: 15 m/s Maximum flight range: 100 km (80 km with max payload) Maximum endurance: 59 mins Maximum altitude: 3000 m AMSL Key specifications Future automation advances may include camera arms around landing points for remote or even autonomous visual inspection
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