Unmanned Systems Technology 001 | UAV Factory Penguin C | Real-time operating systems | Hirth S1218 two-stroke twin | Base stations | ASV C-Enduro | Composites | Datacomms

16 T he ethos of the Penguin unmanned aerial vehicle is extreme endurance for civilian applications such as pipeline monitoring, mapping and search and rescue missions. In 2013, Professor David Schmale of Virginia Tech was one of Popular Science magazine’s ‘Brilliant Ten’ for his work in tracking dangerous microorganisms that surf atmospheric waves; he uses a Penguin B platform in that work. A Penguin B has been used by Centum to verify its new product LifeSeeker, an innovative aerial on- board system that can detect mobile telephones belonging to missing people and report their position to search units. The Penguin B holds the world endurance record for a UAV, set in 2012, at 54.4 hours of non-stop flight. It was the company’s first model following the establishment of UAV Factory in 2009 by Latvian Konstantins Popiks. The ‘A’ version was a prototype that was developed while Popiks was completing a Masters degree in engineering at Liverpool University in England. Popiks admits that he found development of the Penguin harder than he imagined, as his only prior experience was of building and flying radio- controlled model aircraft. As a youth he had been part of the Latvian national team in competitions for radio-controlled aircraft and rocket-launched gliders, which he built himself. Design was trial and error, he admits, while construction used composite airframe technology, albeit on a ‘build it at home’ basis. Popiks notes that once he went to Liverpool University he was able to take a more scientific approach to design, and he pays tribute to the quality of the staff on his course. Advanced software tools rather than wind tunnel testing gave the Penguin its aerodynamic form, which has stood the test of time. While still at the university he found backing to set up an airframe production company in Latvia. “I did the design in Liverpool, while my colleagues in Latvia did the fabrication,” he explains. “I worked around the clock to help them whenever I came back on vacation.” In the end, “two-and-a-half” examples of the Penguin A were built and flown as prototypes, the ‘half’ being explained by a number of crashes during this experimental phase. Having been established in its current guise in 2009, UAV Factory developed the Penguin B on the basis A new-generation Penguin flies Ian Bamsey visits UAV Factory in Latvia to discover the secrets of the remarkable Penguin C November 2014 | Unmanned Systems Technology