Unmanned Systems Technology 007 | UMEX 2016 report | Navya ARMA | Launch & recovery systems | AIE 225CS | AUVs | Electric motors | Lethal autonomous weapons

16 T he whole robotics sector has changed massively in recent years, says Nigel Gifford, founder of consultancy Ozoneering, and it is the smaller companies that are at the heart of these changes. “UAVs, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, cybernetics, it’s accelerating so fast that the traditional companies can’t really get their heads around it,” he says. “They are so inward-looking and protectionist in the way they work that they miss the innovation. I’ve found this in a number of projects – it frightens them that innovative things are happening in small companies.” It was this thinking that led to Gifford founding Ascenta to develop a high- altitude autonomous aircraft that could act as a base station to provide internet access to unserved areas of the world. The company was sold to Facebook in 2014, propelling the small team in the South West of the UK onto the world stage. “We all knew each other from previous projects, we kept in touch, we all get industry newsletters and it’s a matter of joining up the dots, and that’s really what I do,” he says. “There’s an expression that’s used in the defence and military world: RMA – Revolutionary Military Affairs – and these change the way the defence world looks at itself,” says Gifford. “A simple example that we all know is from when the machine gun changed the way battles would be fought, but it took two years for that to be realised. The technology change happens long before the military thinking changes. What I look for is Revolutionary Global Affairs and Revolutionary Commercial Affairs – RGAs and RCAs – and join the dots up. “Once you join the dots up, you then have an innovative way of addressing something. In the case of Ascenta it was high-altitude solar-powered communications systems, and that’s how it all began. Really I am a concept engineer – I know which bits will make something work,” he says. Ozoneering’s founder tells Nick Flaherty how his latest project will solve the problems of delivering food to disaster areas Feeding innovation The Pouncer system is built out of vacuum-packed food April/May 2016 | Unmanned Systems Technology