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74 Show reports | CUAV Expo, InterDrone and CUAV Show Altus Unmanned Aerial Solutions has launched a long-range version of its unmanned platform. The Delta LRX has three times the flight time of the existing platform: 25- 35 minutes at 27 mph with a 3.5 kg payload, using a patented ‘stagger-prop’ technology. This uses a combination of large and small diameter rotors mounted to different motor types running at different speeds in a wingspan of 180 cm. Low-rpm motors with large diameter propellers provide the bulk of the lift efficiently, while high-rpm motors driving shorter propellers provide stability and responsiveness. These are powered by a 22,000 mAh lithium-polymer battery. These multi-rotors are in an ‘X-8’ configuration to give high tolerance to wind and buffeting. The X-shaped arms with rotors above and below also enable the aircraft to continue safe flight after individual and even multiple motor failures. The LRX has also been upgraded with dual autopilots, each with its own IMU and GPS antenna, and each monitors the other’s system health, telemetry and accuracy. These are configured in a master-slave arrangement. It also includes Altus’ patented ballistic emergency parachute, which is able to catch the weight of a falling multi-rotor from as low as 25 ft. At the CUAV Show, UK start-up Altitude Angel announced that it is using cloud computing to provide a highly responsive database of the movement of UAVs and any obstacles they might face anywhere in the world in order to minimise any collisions. The team has extensive experience of building scalable systems for the Internet of Things, where data from millions of sensors has to be collected and acted on in real time. The system already contains tens of millions of ground hazards (ranging from power infrastructure to schools), and also pulls in airspace restrictions, weather and space data such as solar flares that can affect the operation of a UAV, all of which is continuously monitored. The technology requires each UAV to have a unique identifier, which can be provided securely by Altitude Angel or another trusted source, which is then tracked by the system using the craft’s GPS. Communication to the cloud is either directly from the UAV or via a mobile phone connected to a remote ground station. Every flight is automatically assigned a globally unique reference number, and operators can optionally associate their own additional data to help monitor the activity of the craft. The company aims to provide updates on potential risks from other craft (including manned aviation), obstacles and weather to the operator or to the UAV directly with sub-second response times. The cloud infrastructure has built-in fault domains that can switch over within 1 s to minimise risk associated with server outage, while there is triple redundancy on the storage and dual redundancy on the computing resources to ensure that there is always data available to the UAV or operator. Any software or hardware vendor in the world can make use of Altitude Angel’s system to improve the situational awareness of their UAV or UAV fleet, and easily integrate advanced capabilities including collision mitigation and avoidance. The prototype system is currently being tested, and the company plans to release its application programming interface (API) to makers of fixed-wing, rotary and hybrid UAVs for free to integrate with the control, autopilot and GPS sensors. This could potentially allow the system to instruct a UAV to avoid a restricted area, take evasive action, loiter in one place or even ground it safely to avoid it becoming a risk to people or other aircraft. The company is also working on an API that would provide a virtual beacon for every UAV with an ID that could be accessed by other navigation systems to provide a collision detection infrastructure. BAE Systems has developed a prototype collision avoidance system for unmanned aircraft. It uses a single high- resolution 5 megapixel CMOS camera with a high-quality Schneider lens, backed by a dual-core microprocessor running up to 2 GHz with a Gigabit Ethernet connection. It deliberately avoids the use of graphics processing units (GPUs) and quad- or octa-core processors as these are not certified for use in critical avionics systems. One core of the Intel i5-class processor is dedicated to running the motion detection algorithm via the camera Dec 2015/Jan 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Altus LRX uses a variety of rotors for lift, stability and responsiveness Commercial UAV Show