EURE media kit 2020 On Land. At Sea. In Flight. Fact not fiction. Science not speculation. What’s on the radar? Vision of Plug-free power Then there were five Advances in sense-and-avoid systems What 5G will mean for unmanned vehicle control the future Wireless charging technologies Key advances in image Signals from space explained and compared Strong attachments sensor technology GNSS rises to the accuracy challenge Way points Why you need to latch on to advances in connectors Advances in MEMS Match points How to pick the right and what they mean Blades of class electric motor for a UAV for navigation Take care How to match a propeller to a UAV Focus on maintenance This year’s modelling Chain of command The latest in simulation and testing kit Advances in ground control systems Rugged and reliable Who wants data? Burning ambition Plug and play A seamless transition Under the surface Tecdron’s TC800-FF UGV has been Robot Aviation looks to fill a gap in the UAV XOcean’s XO-450 hybrid USV collects and delivers How the Wingcopter uses only one propulsion Development details of the iXblue DriX USV designed to fight fires – at least for now market with its all-weather SkyRobot FX450 How Milrem developed its Multiscope commercial UGV system to shift between all flight modes and its underwater payload gondola UST 21 : AUG/SEPT 2018 UST 22 : OCT/NOV 2018 UST 23 : DEC/JAN 2019 UST 24 : FEB/MAR 2019 UST 25 : APRIL/MAY 2019 UST 26 : JUNE/JULY 2019 Read all back issues online Read all back issues online Read all back issues online Read all back issues online Read all back issues online Read all back issues online www.ust-media.com www.ust-media.com www.ust-media.com www.ust-media.com www.ust-media.com www.ust-media.com e22 e22 e22 e22 e22 e22 UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE UK £15, USA $30, EUROPE Advanced Aircraft Company HAMR UAV | Dossier 5G communications | Focus Artist’s rendering of the HAMR with the boom fairings in by the drag, both of which can be Peter Donaldson details the development of this hybrid multi- place. The balls on sticks attached to the leading edges are measured in pounds or kilos, so the mass balance weights for stability (Courtesy of AAC) rotor craft, designed as the prelude to a more advanced system units cancel each other out to leave a dimensionless figure, which coincides with the glide ratio. Because powered-lift vehicles by definition have to consume power to Launched in 2014, UST is generate lift and overcome drag, it is hard to measure the drag, so the Shape of calculation is more complicated. “That’s why, in the case of a helicopter or a multi-rotor, we use effective lift-to- drag ratio,” Fredericks says. “Weight is things to come the same as lift in the numerator, but drag is replaced with velocity divided by the first ever publication to power.” This gives the drag, because the AVs provide tremendous These days AAC is focused on span forward boom and four on the more power required to achieve a opportunities to explore precision agriculture and survey/ longer main boom at the rear. given velocity at a given weight, the the potential advantages mapping, not only because current The front boom also carries a pair more drag there must be. The actual Again, the units cancel out to leave a so we held an aerodynamic clean- Blades of class of unusual airframe regulations permit UAVs but because of pivoting fairings, one between each eL/D calculation involves multiplying dimensionless ratio. up brainstorming session,” Fredericks How to match a propeller to a UAV configurations. Hybrids there is an established market for these motor and the fuselage, while the rear the vehicle’s weight by its velocity and “The aerodynamic efficiency of says. From that, the team selected three Take care Uthat combine the characteristics of services. boom carries four fairings in unequal- dividing the result by the power required. conventional multi-rotors is terrible, solutions. Focus on maintenance focus entirely on providing multicopters and fixed-wing aircraft are “The same design of the HAMR serves length pairs on each side. The longer increasingly common, but the Hybrid both applications, the only difference fairings are between the outer and This year’s modelling Advanced Multi-Rotor (HAMR) being being the sensors that would be inner motors, while the shorter ones developed by the Advanced Aircraft installed,” Fredericks says. are between the inner motors and the Picking up speed Chain of command The latest in simulation and testing kit Company (AAC) under NASA alumnus AAC also plans to expand into fuselage. William ‘Bill’ Fredericks is unique. linear infrastructure inspection – The composite fuselage houses a Advances in ground control systems It uses passively pivoting fairings power lines, pipelines and railway Desert Aircraft DA-35 engine (examined The impending introduction of 5G comms will have that automatically adjust themselves in tracks – and package delivery as the in detail in UST 15, August/September a huge impact on how unmanned systems are airflow to reduce drag and augment lift regulatory framework opens up to 2017) as well as a generator, a fuel tank, independent coverage of the 5G more will herald more responsive remote control of unmanned cars. This Audi Q7 SUV demonstrated in forward flight, and minimise drag in a permit commercial beyond-line-of-sight a Thunder Power lithium-ion battery, an controlled and organised. Nick Flaherty reports the technology at CES 2019 using chips and antennas from Qualcomm (Courtesy of Audi) hover, without the need for actuators. operations. autopilot and comms electronics, and Although the HAMR remains in rotor- For the government/military sector, two payload bays, one in the nose and driven flight throughout its envelope, he says, the HAMR spans the gap in one in the centre of the fuselage. its configuration and lift augmentation size between Group 1 hand-launched he development of the data links at up to 20 Gbit/s – 20 times as well as the 802.11p standard that is 8K high-quality cameras on UAVs to a The specification allows the radios, compared to the all-new 5G system improve significantly on the and Group 2 catapult-launched UAVs, Quest for drag reduction next generation of cellular that of current speeds – as well as low a variant of wi-fi which is used for the smartphone terminal, and for quickly orthogonal frequency domain Standalone (SA) systems. range, speed, payload and endurance noting that it has the minimal logistical The HAMR’s fairings – passively moving comms technology has latency and the ability to support short Digital Short Range Communications downloading high-definition (HD) maps modulation (OFDM) protocols already The advantage of SA is that the engineering of unmanned offered by comparable conventional footprint associated with Group 1 craft, wing surfaces – emerged from efforts reached the point where it data packets from millions of autonomous (DSRC) technology for vehicle-to-vehicle to vehicles. used in 3G and 4G to operate in more radios based on it are simpler and Burning ambition multi-rotor UAVs, and provide a degree which are typically lightweight but with to improve multi-rotor aerodynamics, is ready to be rolled out for systems. It is the first specification that (V2V) links. With Release 16, all of this can be than 30 different bands – from 700 MHz consume less power, and will improve of failsafe operation thanks to a hybrid greater endurance and the ability to carry particularly the lift-to-drag (L/D) ratio. Tunmanned systems. Release 16 of the meets the IMT-2020 targets set in 2012 The low latency of the link can be used achieved using mainstream, high- up to 2.6 GHz, which is just above the performance in throughput up to the 5G specification was frozen at the end by the International Telecommunications for more responsive remote control of volume components that are developed 2.4 GHz unlicenced band of wi-fi; edge of the network, while supporting Under the surface Tecdron’s TC800-FF UGV has been petrol-electric power system. payloads closer to those of the larger Multi-rotors typically have an effective When we interviewed Fredericks Group 2 vehicles. lift-to-drag (eL/D) ratio of around 2, of 2018, and chips built to it are being Union for what the International Mobile unmanned cars and aircraft, as well as for the consumer cellular phone 3.3 GHz up to 6 GHz, and even the the ultra-reliable low latency comms Development details of the iXblue DriX USV designed to fight fires – at least for now for UST issue 13 (April-May 2017), he Fredericks explains, manned helicopters launched in the coming months for use Telecommunication system would look providing more efficient data connections business, allowing autonomous system 24-52 GHz ‘millimetre wave’ bands, (URLLC) of Release 16. Although NSA explained that this vehicle was intended Final configuration have a ratio of between 4 and 5, and in smartphones, but the technology like in 2020 and beyond. to and from roadside infrastructures designers to access the cost savings of allowing system designers to trade off 5G radios will be the first to roll out, they and its underwater payload gondola to pave the way for the more demanding After experimenting with prototypes, of small fixed-wing UAVs achieve ratios in is also set to play a crucial role in the These new capabilities open up the for driverless cars for vehicle-to- volume production.