AMDI has developed an Airborne Guidance Unit (AGU) for Para-Flite Incorporated, a company that designs and manufactures military ram-air canopies, integrating some canopies into a complete autonomous delivery system.

The AGU houses the avionics packages, motors and motor controllers, and batteries. The avionics package consists of the autopilot and a GPS receiver. The autopilot controls two winch motors, which are attached to the right and left steering lines of the ram-air canopy.

The goal of this project is a completely autonomous system, which will be dropped from altitudes as high as 30K feet. For test purposes, a command uplink and telemetry downlink have been incorporated into the system.

Two systems are in development. The first unit, which will carry a load of 500 – 2000 pounds, is undergoing system test. A series of successful drops has been completed, and additional work is being done to refine the steering and landing algorithms. A second system, which will deliver loads from 2,000 to 10,000 pounds, is in development.