The technology multinational GMV has been awarded a contract for the design, development, production, and logistic support of the Ground Flight Control Computer (GFCC) for the Eurodrone Program, thus providing AIRBUS with a reliable safety critical computer to command and control the Eurodrone Unmanned Aerial System (UAS).

The Eurodrone Program is undoubtedly the most challenging cooperation program within this kind of airframe. Born as an agreement reached by the European Council in December 2013, it has among its main objectives to provide partner nations with an air strategic/operational system with state of the art JISR capabilities. Such goal is achieved by means of an UAS capable of flying up to an altitude of 13 Km with maximum speed of 500 km/h and a maximum flight time of 18 to 40 hours, depending on the mission profile.

The GFCC is a DAL-A safety critical system in charge of managing all the flight commands from the Designated UAS Operator (DUO) to be sent to the UAS, as well as displaying systems information so that the DUO has accurate data to perform the mission. Eurodrone is designed for flight in non-segregated airspace, and in order to meet the demanding safety requirements several GFCCs are installed in every Ground Control Station (GCS).

Each GFCC has several boards, COTS and bespoke, within a 19” chassis. GMV will be responsible of the production of all items, the qualification test campaign and the acceptance tests, which include burn-in test procedures.

One of the tasks to be performed by GMV is to adapt the BSP, FPGA and drivers of these boards so that they fulfill new requirements and can be certified according to DO-178C and DO-254 DAL-A.

This contract constitutes one step ahead for consolidating GMV as a reference provider for Critical systems for UAS.