Ikura Soaring Autonomously during a Flight Experiment
Photo: Gall/Universität Stuttgart
The Ikura is a high-performance glider with a wingspan of 4.28 m from the manufacturer Aer-O-Tec. Besides electric propulsion for takeoff, it is equipped with sensors and flight computers to enable autonomous operations. In addition to a Pixhawk flight computer, a companion computer, which allows for the real-time execution of compute- and memory-intensive algorithms, such as particle filters or deep artificial neural networks, can be installed.
The iFR uses the Ikura as a research platform for autonomous soaring. It enables the direct testing and validation of our reinforcement learning approaches for autonomous localization and exploitation of updrafts in flight experiments with real thermals.