With or without a pilot

Developing an optionally piloted vehicle

There are conventional aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, and a third category in between, called optionally piloted vehicles (OPVs). These are planes that can fly with or without a pilot as the situation requires. The Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) is developing an OPV and testing its flight control system by running simulated fl ights in the laboratory with a test bench based on a dSPACE hardware-in-the-loop simulator.