Ricardo builds UAV engines for military

The first engine in the series - the Ricardo Wolverine 3 - is designed to power lightweight aircraft and use military-specification heavy fuels. It is a 3.1-horsepower, two-cylinder, two-stroke, air-cooled engine with spark ignition, direct fuel injection and 500W of onboard power, made possible by an integrated starter generator.

Engineers at Ricardo’s Detroit Technology Campus in Van Buren Township are said to have taken the Wolverine 3 from concept to production readiness in six months and they successfully completed the engine’s ’first fire’ on a dynamometer test stand in early May.

Wolverine 3 will now be installed in a small tactical UAV in preparation for its first flight, which is scheduled for summer 2010 at a test site in Nevada. Ricardo is currently in talks with over a dozen UAV integrators about putting the engine into series production.

According to Dr Ron Storm, director, military market development at Ricardo, smaller UAVs routinely carry multimillion-dollar systems of cameras, sensors and other electronics, but are typically powered by petrol engines originally designed for lawn and garden equipment, or model planes.