Three Opterra Flying Wings Flying in Formation
Photo: Universität Stuttgart
The iFR operates a fleet of 5 e-Flite Opterra flying wings with modified electronics as a swarm. Due to the lack of a landing gear, the Opterra is either launched by hand or with an elastic rope and lands on its belly. It has been retrofitted with a powerful Pixhawk Cube Orange flight control computer and a broad array of sensors and communication hardware to meet the requirements for research on swarm flight.
The Opterra fleet is used as a research platform for swarm flight involving fixed-wing UAVs. Cooperative swarm algorithms can be directly tested in flight experiments using Opterras, thereby demonstrating their practicality. Moreover, the Opterras are used for BVLOS flights.