MILAN – Airbus Defense and Space, in cooperation with the company’s subsidiary UpNext, said it successfully demonstrated autonomous guidance and control of a Do-DT25 target drone using an A310 Multi Role Tanker Transport, or MRTT, aircraft during test flights in Spain.

On March 21, Airbus UpNext performed its first flight-test campaign towards the development of autonomous and uncrewed air-to-air refueling technologies as part of its Auto’Mate project.

The A310 tanker testbed took off at the company’s site in Getafe while four DT-25 multi-purpose target drones, acting as receiver aircraft, were launched back-to-back from the Arenosillo Test Centre in Huelva. Once over the waters of the Gulf of Cadiz, the control of the unmanned aircraft passed over from a ground station to the tanker, which autonomously guided it to an in-flight refueling position.

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“The first flight test lasted about six hours, where a total of four launched receivers were sequentially controlled and commanded via artificial intelligence and cooperative control without human interaction,” Borja García de Sola, External Communications Manager at Airbus Defense and Space told reporters. “The different receivers were then controlled until they were at a minimum recorded distance of 150 feet (45 meters) from the A310.”

A second test flight under the same concept, with four DT-25 drones and A310 tanker, was also performed on March 23. Together, the systems flew about 12 hours using eight unmanned aircraft. Both types of aircraft were integrated with Auto’Mate Demonstrator technologies including cameras, light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, and high precision GPS to monitor the position, speed and altitudes between them; intra-flight communication systems; and cooperative control algorithms to provide coordination and consensus.

During the briefing, company officials revealed that a second campaign is expected to take place at the end of 2023, with trial flights to be carried out at the same location.

While in the first push, the company controlled the receivers in two different configurations and autonomously guided them to different positions with diverse navigation sources, the second one will focus on a more in-depth testing of AI for navigation and autonomous flight.

In addition, the latter will include two simulated drones flying in the proximity of the MRTT to demonstrate multi-receiver autonomous operations and collision-avoidance algorithms, García de Sola pointed out.

These experiments are paving the way toward achieving what the company refers to as Autonomous Assets Air-to-Air Refueling, defined as the ability to independently transfer and receive fuel in-flight. The A4R system allows for several aircraft to be refueled at the same time at a faster rate, reduces the size of tanker crew and enables extended-range missions for the drones.