HCUAV
The Hellenic Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicle RX-1 is a Greek research project, which has currently produced a prototype of a Medium Altitude - Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, with aim for the aircraft to enter production in the future and be utilised in civil and potentially, military operations.
The development started in 2013 and involved a consortium consisting of 6 partners, among them three University research groups including the Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics and Turbomachinery of the Department of Mechanical Engineering or the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the CSL and the Laboratory of Robotics and Automation, as well as three private companies including MLS Innovation Ltd, Spacesonic Ltd and Intracom Defense Electronics (IDE). It is coordinated by the LFMT at the AUTH. The chief engineer of the project is AUTH professor Dr Kyriakos Yakinthos.
Development
The primary project goal was to design and construct a low-cost, high-performance civil UAV, appropriately equipped, for long day and night surveillance and patrol operations, such as maritime monitoring, border protection and forest region surveillance.The HCUAV RX-1 prototype was designed, developed and built as a small to medium-sized MALE-UAV with main objectives surveillance and data gathering for civil protection authorities, making its first and successful flight 36 months after the initiation of the project. The maiden flight took place in 2016, and lasted approximately 15 minutes. Several test flights followed, in order to validate and test different project parameters and objectives. The aircraft's maximum endurance was 11 hours.