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73 means the images and video can be automatically stamped with the location of the UAV. “Vue Pro builds on the original Vue and puts even more thermal imaging functions and greater flexibility in the hands of small UAV operators,” said Jeff Frank, FLIR’s senior vice-president for product strategy. The camera can be set up via a Bluetooth wireless link to an app running on an Apple or Android smartphone. UAV maker Aeryon Labs has teamed up with TrellisWare Technologies to provide low-latency, high-reliability video links from its unmanned aircraft. TrellisWare’s mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) radio technology will be integrated into the Aeryon SkyRanger as an airborne communications relay node. “Through our work with TrellisWare we are acting as an airborne node on the TrellisWare network, providing ‘over the horizon’ line-of-sight comms links,” said David Proulx, vice- president of product and marketing at Aeryon Labs. “The maximum distance between any two nodes on the Trellisware MANET is 26 miles.” The 8 Mbit/s TrellisWare IPv4 and IPv6- compatible network allows eight channels of video to be viewable by every user with an enabled Android device or PC, and has an audio latency of under 275 ms for a single hop and under 400 ms for four hops. In addition, the network allows the terminals to extend the UAS control link via these hops. The TW-600 Ocelot embedded module provides pin-header interfaces for analogue audio, USB data and module control, as well as simultaneous voice, video streaming and position location information. In the network, Ocelot has the ability to act as a network relay to send and receive IP data. The 2 W module measures 3.4 x 2.1 x 0.9 in and weighs 3 oz. It works on the 1775-1815 MHz and 2200-2250 MHz bands. SkyRanger is a quadcopter that can be operated remotely or autonomously via a programmed flight path, and all the payloads have independent stabilisation and are ‘hot swappable’ for quick changes while in operation. A smart battery and charger means flight time and battery minutes are displayed at all times, and the system returns home and lands automatically if user-configurable limits are reached. It also includes intelligent fault handling that automatically detects potential problems by monitoring battery levels, in-flight wind speeds and other system and environmental conditions, and has a configurable automated response behaviour such as the return-home-and- land routine. At InterDrone, Qelzal showed its Qelsafe aircraft avoidance system, which it says uses brain-inspired engineering for a different approach to helping UAVs detect other aircraft. Its vision sensors subtract the static background from the image to highlight movement. “One of the key things we have is special vision sensors that work on the millisecond scale, but to use them you need different processing than conventional machine vision,” said Olivier Coenen, Qelzal’s co-founder and CEO. It works using a regular CMOS sensor with additional processing, which reports changes in the world, and which is similar to how our eyes work. Qelzal’s system reacts 1000 times faster than a conventional system. This is achieved by making use of the sparse inputs obtained from the vision system using a conventional computer for the processing. Brain-inspired hardware may come later in the future to further speed up complex processing. To compete with conventional machine vision Qelzal targeted a market such as that for UAVs with specific needs and constraints where one cannot simply add more computational resources because the UAV payloads are limited by size, weight and power. The Qelsafe system is Qelzal’s first product that detects low-flying aircraft in a range of difficult lighting conditions, for example when a plane is in front of the sun. CUAV Expo, InterDrone and CUAV Show | Show reports Unmanned Systems Technology | Dec 2015/Jan 2016 InterDrone Aeryon’s SkyRanger is to have TrellisWare’s MANET radio technology integrated into it The Qelsafe avoidance system works in a similar way to human vision