Athena - UAV Flight Control and Navigation Systems

Athena Technologies is a leading developer of controls and navigation systems, specializing in flight control solutions. Athena's technological vision and expertise in flight control system design are critical to the success of a wide variety of unmanned platforms, including the Shadow Tactical UAV, NASA's Mars Flyer Demonstrator, Raytheon's Loiter Attack Missile, the US Air Force's Subscale Aerial Target UAV, DARPA’s Organic Air Vehicle, the Golden Eye, Sky-X and many others.

Athena provides advanced systems and hardware - from design through integration - for civilian and military applications that demand reliability and robustness far above the standard. Athena also has world-class manufacturing and production facilities that allow us to produce our flight control systems at very affordable rates.

With our quality products and patented flight control design process, we are able to assist customers take an unmanned vehicle from concept to production in the shortest amount of time, at the lowest life cycle cost. This is why our products and services are utilized by the US Army, the US Air Force, the US Marine Corps, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, AAI Corporation and international customers.

GUIDESTAR™ 311 FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM (FCS) FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE CONTROL AND INTEGRATED SENSOR SUITE

The Athena GuideStar 311 (GS-311) is an integrated, high-performance, low-cost, vehicle control system intended for UAV and military applications. Weighing only 4.8lb, the GS-311 provides a tactical grade strap-down navigation solution featuring attitude and heading information with static and dynamic accuracies superior to traditional spinning-mass vertical and directional gyros.

The GS-311 design meets the most rigorous environmental requirements ensuring a long, trouble-free life and guaranteed performance over the full temperature and altitude range of the system, eliminating the risk of moisture contamination. Athena provides an integrated development environment for customer-developed software on the GuideStar.

GS-111m UAV FLIGHT CONTROL SYSTEM

GS-111m is an advanced, miniaturized flight control system specifically designed for small, high-performance fixed-wing, ducted fan, and helicopter UAV applications. This FCS integrates a complete INS / GPS navigation solution with state-of-the-art multi-input / multi-output flight control laws. The unit includes all the I/O data hardware required to interface with servo actuators, data-link communications, and payloads.

Weighing only 0.5lb, the GS-111m provides robust, high performance over the entire flight envelope. Athena’s patented Feedback LTI’zation design process and flight control algorithms have high tolerance to variations in UAV aerodynamics and vehicle configurations.

GS-111 GPS / ADAHRS / AUTOPILOT

The GS-111 integrates solid-state gyros and accelerometers, magnetometer, GPS receiver, and air data pressure transducers into a single unit. Weighing 1.7lb, this unit is a high-reliability, strap-down system, providing attitude and heading measurement with static and dynamic accuracy superior to traditional spinning-mass vertical and directional gyros. Superior accuracy is achieved during dynamic maneuvers through Kalman-Filter algorithms and GPS / magnetometer reference. The GS-111 is on the Air Force's most recent target platform, the BQM-167A Target UAV.

MICRO GUIDESTAR 111U - INTEGRATED HIGH-PERFORMANCE, LOW COST SENSOR SUITE

The Micro GuideStar™ is an advanced sensor suite that integrates a complete INS/GPS navigation solution, with the option of hosting flight control software into a single miniaturized unit. The Micro GuideStar uses highly reliable solid state sensors, including accelerometers, rate gyros, magnetometer, air data pressure sensors, along with a differential ready, WAAS-enabled GPS receiver. The Micro GuideStar unit includes all the analog and digital I/O interface hardware required to accommodate a variety of vehicle configurations and payloads.

The Micro GuideStar’s integrated, compact and robust packaging, ensures a lower overall life cycle cost for manned or unmanned vehicle programs.

GS-211HG-7 INTEGRATED FLIGHT SENSOR SOLUTION

The GS-211HG-7 is a member of Athena’s GuideStar product line of highly sophisticated, compact and affordable INS / GPS and air data, integrated sensor solutions for UAV and military applications, with an optional flight control module.

GuideStar 211HG-7 features:

• A Honeywell HG-1700 tactical grade IMU
• A Trimble Force-22 differential ready SAASM GPS receiver
• Built-in tri-axial magnetometer with automatic hard iron compensation
• Built-in air data system pressure transducers including static, airspeed and flow angle measurements
• Kalman filter INS providing high accuracy navigation and control state vector
• Electrical and mechanical design, and manufacturing process that meets military environmental requirements, including temperature, shock, vibration, EMI and humidity
• Enclosed in a sealed aluminum enclosure weighing approximately 6lb and in a volume of less than 220in³ (6in x6in x6in)
• Optional software module providing Athena’s full suite of advanced and flight proven autopilot, guidance, navigation and mission management functions