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We are pleased to announce that AVILUS has been certified by the German Federal Aviation Office (Luftfahrtbundesamt, LBA) as a Light UAS Operator (LUC) in accordance with Regulation (EU) 2019/947, Annex Part C. This makes us the third company in Germany to receive this prestigious certification.

During October, our Flight Operations team collaborated closely with the German Army to test, analyse, and strategize the integration of emerging defence technologies into the Bundeswehr.

In the beginning of September, we were honored to test the Grille in various jamming scenarios together with the Electronic Warfare Unit (EloKa) of the Bundeswehr (German Federal Armed Forces) at the Drone Innovation Hub of WTD61. Despite multiple attempts to jam the satellite navigation (GNSS) and command and control signals (C2), the controllability of our second generation aircraft stayed uninfluenced.

AVILUS, in collaboration with the Bundeswehr, successfully demonstrated the "Grille" rescue drone during a flight presentation for NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO). The attendees of the exploratory team (ET) focus on developing innovative solutions for control and integration of swarms, aiming to optimize operational collaboration between human operators and autonomous systems.

We are proud to announce the successful maiden flight of the Grille 9X-02, which took place on August 14th at the WTD61 testing facilities in Manching. This achievement marks a significant milestone in the development and testing of our second-generation aircraft, after months of continuous efforts by our dedicated team.

AVILUS unveiled the latest model of the UAV Grille (9X-02) at the ILA Berlin from June 5th to June 9th. The exhibition took place at the booth of the German Armed Forces within the Military Support Centre (MSC), highlighting AVILUS’ integral role in the Bundeswehr Technical Centre for Aircraft and Aircraft Equipment (WTD61) and the Drone Innovation Hub (DIH) in Manching.

After more than a year of successful flights, we, had a landing mishap at Erding Airbase on the afternoon of the 30th of April 2024. In a training flight with a manual landing, the control system exhibited unexpected behaviour, leading to a flip-over touchdown. The aircraft stayed in its designated flight volume right over the runway and neither people nor third party property was harmed. For safety, the local fire brigade was alarmed but only had to monitor without the need for intervention.

Together with our production partner IFAS, we were able to realize our vision of a mobile control room within three months. The RAS-PECC, i.e. the “Patient Evacuation Coordination Cell”, which carries the ground control segment for robotic and autonomous systems (RAS), is to be viewed as a supplement to the PECC at brigade level. The command element fits seamlessly into the existing military medical reporting chain and is responsible for the coordination and dispatch of UAV operations to evacuate the wounded. A dispatcher and a safety pilot take control of all rescue drones under the command element.

In December, the project iMEDCAP, funded by the European Defence Fund, was kicked-off. With its user-driven, holistic approach, the flagship iMEDCAP sets out to revolutionize the emergency detection, identification, extraction, treatment, and evacuation of gravely injured and possibly contagious personnel in a completely autonomous way.

A few weeks ago, together with our partner Krauss-Maffei Wegmann GmbH & Co. KG (KNDS) as well as the Bundeswehr Medical Academy and the Medical Squadron Bischofswiesen, we had the chance to carry out a military medical exercise at WTD61, within the context of the RASEVAC philosophy.

Together with our partner, the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the Technical University of Munich, our team took on the challenge of carrying out a comprehensive overall test of our DRONEVAC system after just two years of development in order to verify the performance and reliability of our technology in real field use. The results of the first mission flights not only confirmed our high expectations, but also put our vision of UAV-based rescue missions into practice.

We would like to thank all guests, visitors, interested parties and supporters of the "Grille/Cricket" project who attended the Day of the Bundeswehr in the medical academy in Munich and the information teaching exercise of the medical services of the Bundeswehr at the medical teaching regiment in Feldkirchen.

The past two years have been quite a journey. The vision originating from experts of the military evacuation chain has transformed into reality and thus, the company AVILUS could evolve from zero to more than 30 employees, three operational facilities and a full-scale prototype aircraft.

After a steep team ramp up in the beginning of the year, AVILUS is proud to present our new headquarters in Ismaning. The location is the perfect compromise for the mostly Munich based engineering team to stay in close vicinity to the flight operations test site in Manching.

Together with our partner, the institute of flight system dynamics of the Technical University of Munich, we presented our propeller measurement truck at the AERO 2022 in Friedrichshafen. A large part of the visitors was surprised by the unusual setup.

We believe in model based development. For us, physical modeling is a key step to understand all important effects and internal design drivers of any complex system. Especially for novel aircraft configurations without existing learning curves, model based design is crucial for increasing development speed and reducing financial as well as safety risks.

The best way to overcome the issue of high uncertainty in modeling and simulation is measurement. The unique test truck of AVILUS allows a high frequency recording of all propeller forces and moments under hover and crossflow conditions. Our equipment provides a setup with variable angles of attack from pure crossflow down to pure positive and negative axial flow. Furthermore, our customers can choose in between a single and a coaxial setup with adjustable axial spacing.