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Light helicopters are used for a variety of applications, attracting users from private and public market segments because of their agility and convenient storage capabilities. However, most light helicopters on the market today are designed and manufactured with technologies dating back to the 1980s, with safety issues to be addressed by advanced design methods, more powerful engines, and innovative solutions. In this regard, the DISRUPT (Development of an innovative and safe ultralight, two-seater turbine helicopter) project, led by Curti Aerospace Division (Italy) and co-funded by the EU H2020 program, is a state-of-the-art concept for a novel ultralight helicopter equipped with a ballistic parachute. In order to validate the first parachute ejection in a safe scenario, a dronization process was selected as a viable solution to be performed in collaboration with the University of Bologna. In the present paper, the steps followed to transform the helicopter into an unmanned vehicle are detailed according to the model-based design approach, with particular focus on mathematical modeling, control system design, and experimental validation. Obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of using a civil helicopter first as a remotely-piloted vehicle and then as a highly-automated personal transportation system in the framework of smart and sustainable air mobility.

This report presents a comparison via field-testing between Parrot Sequoia and Mapir Survey2 multispectral cameras. Both sensors are commonly used in precision farming activities conducted by micro-RPAS (drones), thanks to their small size and light weight. The experimental activity was performed in summer on the vineyards of the Savignola Paolina agricultural holding in Tuscany. The sensors were taken on board the EXOS drone, a hexacopter developed by Zephyr S.r.l. company and specifically designed for precision farming operations. Good and bad qualities for each cameras are examined by a comprehensive approach, starting from technical specifications and continuing with a comparison of the results obtained on field. All the activity was performed by a partnership between the companies DroneBee and Zephyr S.r.l. .

Il Laboratorio di Meccanica del Volo (MDVLab) dell’Università di Bologna nasce nel 2006 presso la Seconda Facoltà di Ingegneria e la sua attività di ricerca riguarda principalmente problematiche di modellazione, simulazione e controllo del volo atmosferico e spaziale. Un'intensa collaborazione con l’Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) ha consentito di estendere le proprie conoscenze al di fuori del settore aerospaziale, presentando oggi un’ampia offerta di tecnologie per l’Osservazione della Terra nell'ambito di progetti in cui MDVLab è coinvolto insieme ad INGV per l’impiego di velivoli non abilitati per applicazioni di gestione del rischio sismico, vulcanico ed ambientale. Flight testing with thermal camera Remote sensing from satellites or aircraft represents an impor-tant tool for the monitoring and management of catastrophic events. For some rapidly evolving phenomena (e.g. volcanic events, wildfires) they both show two relevant limits: long revisiting time (satellites) and the high cost and high human risk for monitoring. Unmanned Aircraft Veicle (UAV) because of their autonomous flight and real time telemetry transmis-sion offer a good solution to these limitations.To explore the operational aspects of such UAV deployments for example in volcanology, INGV in partnership with MavLab department of University of Bologna (Unibo) developed a UAV system and actually are carrying on integration studies and testing of sci-entific payloads. The payload is thermal camera. it has a light weight of 67.5g while the spectral response is in the 7-14mi-cron spectral range. The integration activities, the on board installation and results of the first in flight thermal acquisition experiment realized on July 30 2011, in Italy, are presented.

MDVLab: a flight over Antarctica The Flight Mechanics Laboratory (MDVLab) of the University of Bologna was born in 2006 at the Second Faculty of Engineering. The research activity mainly covers problems of modeling, simulation and control of atmospheric and spatial flight. Thanks to the intense collaboration with the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV), the workgroup has extended its knowledge beyond the aerospatial field, showing a wide offer of technologies for the Observation of the Earth. An important project in wich MDVLab is involved with INGV regards the use of unmanned aircrafts for magnetic field measurements in Antarctica; in this paper the acquisition system is described and the first experimental results are shown.