Autonomous flight capabilities have become a major field of interest for all types of aerial vehicles, ranging from small drones to big transport aircraft. While large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) today mostly operate at high levels of automation (often military), it remains a challenge to develop comprehensive auto flight capabilities for smaller UAV or manned aircraft, e.g., from the general aviation or ultralight domains. It is thus a focus area of the Institute of Flight System Dynamics of the Technical University of Munich to research, develop, and demonstrate auto flight solutions for such configurations. In several projects over the last couple of years, fly-by-wire systems with advanced auto flight functions have been designed, implemented, and flight tested for both, medium-sized unmanned as well as small manned aircraft, denoted as optionally-piloted vehicles (OPV). This paper presents system design and flight test experiences by the examples of the unmanned SAGITTA Research Demonstrator (150 kg) and the institute's own research aircraft and OPV demonstrator, a Diamond Aircraft DA42 (2 tons). While a common baseline of the auto flight system developed at the institute was used in both projects, operational requirements and test experiences have led to differing detailed design solutions. By the example of the autoland capability, this paper compares the two designs and illustrates the advantages and challenges of UAV and OPV platforms.
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