Austria-based visionair specializes in developing high-reliability power management systems and propulsion solutions for unmanned vehicles and robotics, mainly for defense. The company also offers engineering consultancy services. visionair’s main customers are system integrators and developers.

The company was founded in 2014 to build aerial platforms with cameras for media productions such as 3D sequences on television and 3D movies. In the same year, the first Austrian drone regulations were released. Redundancy requirements meant that a single drone needed multiple motors, propellors, autopilots and power sources to keep assets safe in the air in case one part suddenly stopped working.

The development of redundant power distribution solutions

The redundancy requirement posed by the Austrian drone legislation provided a business opportunity for visionair, as there were no professional power management systems available in the market at that time. Drone manufacturers and developers created hobby-based design solutions, which were inefficient and unsafe. To meet the need for professional redundant power management, visionair developed two power distribution solutions, the 900W and 1800W Power Distribution Unit.

Both units convert unregulated battery voltage down to a set of regulated outputs suitable for distribution within small to medium-sized UAVs and medium to large-sized UAVs. While having system parts redundant resulted in a heavier and pricier system, the benefit was increased safety and less crashes due to power failure.

Why drone safety is more than redundancy alone

One approach to a product management system is to develop a single solution that monitors different drone system parts. This is problematic for two reasons: a heavy unit could infringe on a drone’s center of gravity, and a single damaged feature would make the entire unit useless. This explains why from the beginning, visionair separated different features into separate products. 

Monitoring individual system parts is another differentiator of visionair’s power management systems. Having a lot of data from individual system components enables safety and emergency automation within the autopilot to keep the drone aloft, in addition to having better physical safety as a result of redundancy.

Today, visionair’s product range includes power distribution units, generator control units, battery management systems, engine starters, and other accessories, all designed to ensure fail-safe operation in critical applications. After developing these separate solutions, the company started getting requests from drone manufacturers to test their propulsion packages, as they did not have the knowledge and experience required to do this themselves.

Developing a propulsion system testing solution

visionair then decided to offer customers the opportunity to send them their engine and build a full propulsion package to test and calibrate everything for them. Many different parameters and values enable optimizing a system for efficiency and reliability. A test cell was needed to test the entire system, including the company’s products and the different requirements regarding RPM range. 

The biggest issue with every test is inefficiencies that exist in a full system from the power from the engine down to the servo. One example of this is the power loss due to the conversion of mechanical power to electrical power. Many drone users were unaware of this or didn’t know what to do or how to make up for this power loss.

visionair’s propulsion system testing solution looks at every aspect of the system, including mechanical loads and vibration testing. This results in a tailored approach to what an individual system and setup is capable of, testing the different states that could occur during a flight, and being sure the system works within specific conditions.

The end goal of the testing solution is to optimize the system for safety to keep assets in the air and prevent them from crashing. The expertise from visionair to make drone systems more efficient also helps customers save time and money, as they don’t have to invest in training people on how their system works, invest in test equipment and perform the optimization themselves.