South African UAV developer Avior Labs is expanding its unmanned aircraft portfolio with Callisto, an all-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) platform designed to combine extended endurance with onboard artificial intelligence and autonomous mission management.

Avior Labs, based in Irene, Gauteng, showcased the Callisto at the recent Africa Aerospace and Defence (AAD) exhibition in September. The aircraft represents a new approach to persistent surveillance, surveying and intelligence gathering, with an emphasis on onboard processing and reduced operator workload.

Founded in 2019, Avior Labs applies a defence aerospace engineering background and a simulation-led development philosophy to its aircraft. Founder and Managing Director Dr Bennie Broughton said this approach enables the company to predict performance before committing to hardware development.

“We don’t fly anything without simulating it first,” he clarified. “We can predict with a very high level of accuracy what performance we are going to get out of the system long before we build it.”

Callisto is intended for border security, coastal and maritime patrol, search and rescue, and protection of pipelines, powerlines and railway infrastructure. Its surveying applications include wildlife management, game counting and vegetation monitoring across extensive areas, potentially exceeding 2 000 hectares per mission.

Callisto builds on lessons learned from the company’s hugely successful smaller Elevation platform but represents a fundamental shift in design philosophy.

“Callisto is built to a large extent around its AI mission computer,” Broughton explained. “On Elevation, the AI that it does have on board, like object detection, is a payload function. In the case of Callisto, it’s an aircraft function.”

At the heart of Callisto is a dedicated FPGA-based mission computer, supported by a proprietary software stack developed over several years. The architecture is designed to process sensor data, identify objects and prioritise information in real time, reducing reliance on continuous operator intervention and high-bandwidth communications.

Avior Labs has developed its own object-detection algorithms for aerial imagery, alongside software that monitors the aircraft’s health. This includes identifying changes in vibration that could indicate a deteriorating motor or damaged propeller, as well as detecting certain control-system failures and reallocating control functions to compensate where possible.

Callisto’s autonomy extends to mission planning. Rather than requiring operators to programme individual waypoints, the system allows them to designate an area of interest and specify a task, such as surveying terrain, patrolling a perimeter or monitoring an area for particular activity.

“We designate an area of interest on a map, and then we task the drone,” said Broughton. “We tell it what we’d like it to do in that area.”

The aircraft then determines how best to execute the mission, taking account of terrain and communications coverage.

An encrypted mesh datalink allows Callisto to communicate with other aircraft, ground units and network relays. Multiple drones can share information and coordinate their activities, enabling one aircraft to concentrate on a detected target while another expands its patrol area to cover the resulting gap. A reserve aircraft could also be tasked to launch when additional coverage is needed.

“The whole idea is it’s all done in an automated way so that to the operator all of this is transparent,” Broughton noted. “He can focus on getting his ground units to deal with the target.”

Callisto has a wingspan of 3.6 metres and a maximum gross take-off weight of 15 kg, compared with Elevation’s 2.5 metre wingspan and approximately 4.5 kg weight. Its modular mission bay is designed for a two kilogram payload, with scope for heavier configurations when an optional battery extender is removed.

Avior Labs is targeting flight times of four to eight hours, depending on the battery configuration, and a range of up to 580 km. These figures are intended to support missions requiring substantially longer persistence than conventional multirotor drones can provide.

Callisto was initially conceived as a hybrid-electric aircraft, as endurance requirements for missions such as border patrol and search and rescue have traditionally favoured platforms with combustion engines. Recent improvements in battery technology and propulsion-system efficiency, however, prompted a rethink.

“When we started running the numbers using our own design capability and what we can push in terms of efficiency, it became clear to us that we can actually achieve sort of an entry-level hybrid type of performance, but with an all-electric,” Broughton said.

Different battery options will allow customers to balance endurance against acquisition and operating costs. A higher-energy-density battery is intended to support the upper end of the endurance range, although its cost and cycle life may not suit every operator.

The design also leaves open the possibility of a hybrid configuration for customers prioritising maximum endurance and already equipped to support combustion engines.

The aircraft’s three-lift-rotor VTOL arrangement, featuring what the company describes as an over-actuated configuration, is intended to improve stability and control in demanding conditions. Avior Labs targets operation in ground-level winds of approximately 12–14 m/s and specifies IP55 protection against dust ingress and water. Actual mission capability will also depend on the environmental limits of the selected payload.

Broughton said this resilience is particularly important for time-critical missions: “The last thing you want is someone is in a capsized yacht off a coast, but you have to wait for the storm to pass before you can go look for the guy.”

Avior Labs is developing two configurations using the same basic airframe. One is intended for civilian and commercial operations; the other incorporates additional systems and software hardening for military environments.

Callisto remains at the prototype stage and is not yet in production. Broughton saids the company’s experience establishing production processes for Elevation should help accelerate the transition once development and validation are complete.

Source: https://defenceweb.co.za/aerospace/aerospace-aerospace/avior-labs-unveils-callisto-its-next-generation-ai-driven-autonomous-vtol-drone/