AeroVironment (AVAV) recently announced that it has flown its Puma small unmanned aircraft for over nine hours, powered by an onboard fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system.
This breaks the previous announced Puma flight record of over seven hours.
A two-camera payload system provided a live, streaming video feed from the Puma, the largest of AV’s portfolio of small unmanned aircraft systems that also includes Raven and Wasp. The nine-hour flight duration more than triples the duration of Puma’s standard battery-only operation.
The successful demonstration marked a milestone in AV’s Phase II small business innovation research (SBIR) contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the development of advanced energy storage and propulsion technologies for unmanned aircraft.
AV developed the battery pack, power electronics and controls portion of the hybrid energy storage system, which used Protonex Technology Corp.’s (PTX) Pulse UAV fuel cell system.
Development progress moved swiftly from kickoff in January 2007, to achieving a five-hour flight in May 2007, a seven-hour flight in July 2007, and the recent nine-hour flight.
“We are delighted with the performance of AV’s fuel cell hybrid-powered Puma,” 1st Lt. Don Erickson of AFRL said. “The joint AFRL, AV and Protonex team has done an outstanding job expanding the flight envelope of Puma through this research program. The successful extended duration capability demonstrated through this program has the potential to expand the utility of hand-launched UAS to address a variety of missions performed by operational units around the world.”
John Grabowsky, AV executive vice president and general manager of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, said, “Our military customers rely upon our small UAS daily for real-time reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition. This demonstration of long-duration flight from a hand-launched UAS highlights AV’s capabilities in developing and integrating efficient electric energy technologies. We believe that increasing endurance has the potential to extend the utility and concept of operations of our entire portfolio of unmanned aircraft into applications that require longer flight times.”
With a wingspan of 8.5 feet and weight of 12.5 pounds, Puma is a lightweight, hand-launched UAS that provides aerial observation at line-of-sight ranges up to 10 kilometers. Operating from the same ground control system used for Raven and Wasp, Puma incorporates avionics that enable autonomous flight and precise GPS navigation. Its adaptable design allows for custom payloads to be added instead of the air vehicle’s standard configuration of color and IR cameras.