Unmanned Systems Technology 006 | ECA Inspector Mk2 USV | Antenna systems | Northwest UAV NW-44 | Unmanned ground vehicles | Navigation systems | Lunar X challenge

10 Platform one February/March 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology The UK is to get a 40-mile test area for autonomous vehicles in one of eight research projects backed by £20m of government funding. The £5.6m UK Connected Intelligent Transport Environment (UKCITE) aims to create an advanced environment for testing connected and autonomous vehicles, and involves equipping more than 40 miles of urban roads, dual carriageways and motorways around Coventry with wireless links to establish how this technology can improve journeys and reduce congestions. The consortium includes Visteon Engineering, Jaguar Land Rover, Huawei, Siemens and Vodafone. The £2.2m Insight project will develop driverless shuttles with advanced sensors and control systems, and trial them in city pedestrian areas. Participants include Westfield Sportscars and Heathrow Enterprises, who are providing hardware and software for the GATEway project, as well as sensor software company Fusion Processing. The £5.5m Flourish project will help develop new tools in artificial intelligence, and will address vulnerabilities in the technology powering connected vehicles, with a focus on the critical areas of cyber security and wireless communications. The consortium of engineering firm Atkins, Airbus and AI specialist Aiseedo will aim to develop tools that enable vehicle manufacturers and transport authorities to create a safe and secure connected autonomous vehicle (CAV) network. The £5.5m Move-UK project brings together Bosch, Jaguar Land Rover and TRL in Greenwich, London, to accelerate the development and deployment of automated driving systems using telematics technology from UK company The Floow to compare the behaviour of a driverless vehicle with that of a human driver in the same real-world environment. Other projects such as the £1m Innovative Testing of Autonomous Control Techniques (INTACT) will reduce the cost of testing and evaluating autonomous control systems, while i-MOTORS – Intelligent Mobility for Future Cities Transport Systems – will develop a connected Vehicle to Anything (V2X) system via a mobile platform as a proof of concept with hardware to receive and analyse sensory data in real time from multiple locations via the cloud. Green light for car projects Driverless vehicles Prototype people-carrier The Ehang 184 makes journeys in a series of hops set by a smartphone app Chinese manufacturer Ehang has developed a prototype UAV that can carry a person short distances. The Ehang 184 Autonomous Aerial Vehicle (AAV) weighs 200 kg and uses eight rotors with a total output of 106 kW to carry a payload of up to 100 kg. While the speed is up to 100 kph, the cruise time is 23 minutes as it consumes 14.4 kWh of energy from the battery that takes two to four hours to charge. The design distance of less than 500 m is determined by the line-of- sight regulations, so a smartphone app is used to set a series of short hops. A camera on the 184 determines whether the landing area is clear so that the craft can land safely. The design is fully redundant, and if any components malfunction or become disconnected, the craft will immediately land in the nearest possible area to ensure safety. The communications link to the app control is encrypted, and each AAV has its own independent key. Personal transport