Towards Single-Failure-Tolerant Multicopters

The increasing use of multicopters and other unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems has caused the need for appropriate security measures. Such measures are usually country-specific and differ significantly from each other. In Europe, several national aviation regularities have implemented national registration processes whose non-compliance constitutes a violation of law and may be prosecutable. In this paper we summarize briefly the current situation regarding UAV licensing in Europe, and then present a self-developed redundancy board that was required by Austria's national aviation agency Austro Control to get the license for flying over densely populated areas. The redundancy board is capable of automatically switching between two built-in flight controllers in case of problems of the primary flight controller. We present the board and its inner workings.