A team of young engineers from Moldova builds drones of its own design, which it has exported to all continents | PiataAuto.md
August 6, 2022, 8:21 p.m
Elijah Thomas
The regional security context in which we find ourselves has made us all look much more carefully at drones, both civilian and military, because their importance nowadays is extraordinary, and the purposes for which they can be applied are . extraordinarily vast. Some countries have found themselves lagging far behind others in advanced drone design capabilities, others on the contrary, thanks to drones have made an unexpected huge leap in technology and the potential it possesses. And no matter how paradoxical it might seem, or how skeptical we might be at first sight, in Moldova there is a team of young engineers with a formidable skill in the design and production of drones. There are engineers about whom I know very little, but who have already designed drones of superb, even incredible, technological performance. In the current security context, I asked them if they could publicly display their history and what they were doing, because I sensed that there might be things that might need discretion. They answered us, however, that their products are civil, therefore they are open to show the world what they do.
The lead engineer of the team, the man who is the main project and the one who leads the team, is called Anton Danici. He tells us that all his childhood he had an extraordinary passion for aviation and especially for helicopters. As a child, he begged his parents to buy him a remote control helicopter that he could fly. Back then, the search lasted for so many years, Anton had already turned into a young adult until, at about 20 years old, he bought himself a dream come true. Then he wondered if he could not create flying machines himself.
He studied countless materials on aerodynamics, shapes, phenomena dictated by propellers and the formula of combinations of several propellers and the actual effects. He did aeronautical engineering through his own thirst for knowledge, one might say, as even the students of renowned sophisticated faculties in countries with experience in aviation construction do not.
Then he started building drones for more sophisticated, cinematic shoots. Serial drones, which existed 7-10 years ago, but still today, did not allow professional cinema filming techniques, which are heavy and need to be powered, to be lifted into the air. And on top of that, cinema shoots often require an aerial camera to follow the action at 100 km/h, or even more. By classic methods, real helicopters are used. Anton and his team, however, proposed at that time to the cinematographic industry drones built by them in copies adapted to the specific requirements of the studio or the film. And that meant that Moldovan engineers adapt the number of them needed, the wingspan, the frame construction, the power, the load and the total take-off weight โ everything. They were drones built from scratch, customized and adapted. And such drones were exported, as Anton does not say, to absolutely all inhabited continents on the world map.
Meanwhile, however, several state organizations in the world have understood that drones are good not only for filming, but also for monitoring with advanced functionality, from the frontier of police or medical activities. And part of the orders started to come from industries other than the kinematics, but at the same time the technical requirements for altitude and flight duration changed. Anton and his team understood that they needed much more sophisticated and advanced products, which they would design differently from kinematic drones, and which would respond in a much more perfect way to any requirements of this type.
This is how we arrived at the two basic models of drones, which have already been designed and are now mass-produced in Chisinau. The drone below, for example, is purely electric, and takes off vertically thanks to 4 propellers, propelled by motors totaling 10 HP. Later, at altitude, it picks up speed and begins to glide like an airplane, being propelled by an 8 HP vertical engine.
The wingspan is 3.5 meters, but the genius of the construction of this team from Moldova is that they designed these drone models modularly, so that the components are disconnected and transported in small volumes, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the drone. it can have a few additional components, achieving a span of 6 meters. On the 6-meter one, however, slightly more powerful engines are installed. And when connecting the components, their internal construction is designed so that the modules interconnect the necessary wires, so there is no need to connect when you start a drone assembly in field conditions, for example. All the components are no more than 1.20 meters in size, and this allows such a disassembled drone to be good in a standard airplane suitcase for ordinary travel and to go with it anywhere in the world, for example.
Such a drone has a maximum take-off mass of 40 kg, and the largest โ 50 kg. The curb weight of the smaller version is 20 kg, but engineers are already producing a full version of carbon fiber and other aerospace materials, reducing the curb weight to 15 kg, leaving more for the payload.
The cruising speed of this electric drone is 80-100 km/h, and the take-off speed is 0, of course, the vertical take-off capability. Flight time is 2-3 hours. There are four easily removable batteries that can be replaced in the field.
The second drone model is one with horizontal take-off and needs to reach a speed of about 62-65 km/h for take-off. Instead, this drone can fly at an altitude of up to 2,000 meters, but the fuselage is calculated for an altitude of up to 6,000 meters, with a maximum speed of 200 km/h!
The propulsion is no longer electric, because at such an altitude the temperatures are low and the batteries decrease in capacity to ensure the necessary energy flow. This drone uses a 2-stroke engine, but the team is already testing a 4-stroke engine to make available. That engine has an injector and will have a generator on board, which will also allow the installation of additional electric motors and also allow the drone to operate at the desired 6,000 meters. The petrol drone has an autonomy of up to 8 hours.
The drones are guided through a control station, which is also made by the team from Moldova. It incorporates a tablet and both touchscreen and keyboard control interface, as well as the necessary battery and transmitters. This station displays the map, the telemetry of the aircraft, but also the images captured by the camera or video cameras of the drone. The drone has an autopilot, so automated steering, and through the control station you can give an exact point directly on the map, or by entering the necessary coordinates. Naturally, actions at the destination and the return to the base can be programmed. Or, conditions can be programmed to fulfill some or other actions. And the entire flight, from takeoff to landing, can be directed both manually and autonomously by the drone.
The nav camera of a compact, mounted on the center of the fuselage. And the reconnaissance camera is not any commercial camera out there, but a special, advanced camera with advanced zoom and excellent capture quality.
The uniqueness of the drones produced in Moldova is the fact that all the avionics are not contained inside the main fuselage, but in one of the modules at the base of the wings, which is lighter and more compact, which also makes recovery easier in certain conditions, but also easier data download operation. Eventually, in the event of an accident, the hollow body of the fuselage can be replaced more cheaply, while the essential electronic part has a better chance of surviving and modularly connected to another hollow body, produced cheaper.
Drones in basic equipment can communicate with the command station within a range of 50 km, but this range is extendable either by relays or by enabling satellite communication through paid secure channels that guarantee a good data transmission speed. The most high-tech drones can have sophisticated terrain-scanning LiDAR radars, infrared cameras, and many other advanced technologies.
All stages of design and testing are done by young engineers from Moldova. So the digital design of the drone shapes, the calculations through simulation software, the finalization of the digital design, the production of the matrices for the drone components, the choice of materials and the actual production of the materials takes place with the minds and hands of these Moldovan engineers. They have already assimilated the technology to cast components from the necessary materials and work including carbon fiber, resin injections, or vacuum casting and consolidation. They also have the necessary furnaces for both carbon fiber and more common aeronautical materials!
The production time of a drone is one month, taking into account all the technological processes, but, of course, the drones can be produced in succession, following the technological processes in the chain. The team wants to be able to reach a capacity of 20 drones per month in the near future. A basic drone, with the most basic sensor and communication technology, costs about 50,000 euros, a price that is anyway much lower than any other drones with comparable capabilities, precisely because almost everything, except for batteries and motors, is produced in Moldova, in-house. Drones equipped with the most sophisticated technologies exceed 200,000 euros each.
And some of the young people, whom I caught filling the matrices with nets and pouring liquid materials, to be later baked and hardened, are students, to take care of the work and a part-time job, and here an investment of future, but the adherence to an extraordinary vision that this team has, that Moldova can make such complex drones, that there can be teams that can set such supreme, modern engineering challenges and achieve them!
I asked this team of only 5 engineers from Moldova if they support the state in their initiative, if there is communication with the state and how they still stay in Moldova and produce and design here. They told us that they encountered a lot of superficiality over the years from the state institutions, but lately they start to feel that they are listened to and understood more often, and those in the state institutions understand more values โโof these technologies. At the same time, they told us that they had proposals from abroad, but Anton only accepted the temporary, consulting ones, where he was requested, but he did not want to leave here. He says that his mayor’s goal is not to make maximum profit from what he does, but rather he would be happy that Moldova could benefit from these technologies and progress together with their team, but also that the world would become a better place thanks to the drones created by them. For example, an international customer who can also mention the Red Cross, which buys the Moldovan team drones for their missions. And he would like to continue to stay in Moldova, to be able to progress here and to be able to work for the benefit and interest of our countries in the first place.
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