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PITVANT is a joint project between the University of Porto (UP) and Portuguese Air Force Academy (AFA). This research and development effort is supported by the Portuguese Defense Ministry.
The primary goals of this project are:

  • Generation of operational know-how on UAS operations for the Portuguese military and security forces;
  • Development of technological know-how on UASs, their subsystems, and UAS integration;
  • Development of fully operational UASs;
  • Definition, testing, and validation of UAS ConOps;
  • Development of state-of-the-art UAV flight controllers for multiple and heterogeneous vehicles' operations;
  • Development of mixed initiative control of heterogeneous vehicles over inter-operated networks.

The project began at the end of 2008 with a projected 8 year runtime. Currently the PITVANT project operation statistics count with a total of more than 700 flights and 320 hours of accumulated flight time.