Unmanned Systems Technology 008 | Alti Transition UAS | Ground control systems | Xponential 2016 report | Insitu Orbital N20 | UAVs | Solar power | Oceanology International 2016 report

55 AUVSI’s Xponential | Show report themes as per customer requirement). In the case of the series hybrid, the IC engine powers a generator that in turn provides the current needed by each of the individual electric motors for the multiple rotors. There is an optional battery back-up for transient power requirements. In the case of the parallel hybrid for a fixed-wing application, a single propeller can be driven either by the IC engine alone or in conjunction with an electric motor/generator unit (MGU). Thus the MGU not only provides power for the craft’s electrical system, as per the operation of a normal generator, it can also work as a motor to assist with take-off and climb, allowing a smaller IC engine to be specified. Technify Motors, Niels Mundt explained, is the current name for the German aircraft engine manufacturer formerly known as Thielert. The name change came when Chinese AVIC International Holding Corporation bought it from administrators in 2013. This was the first AUVSI show at which the company has exhibited as Technify Motors, Mundt noted. Interestingly, under AVIC ownership it is a sister company to Continental Motors. Currently Technify Motors is supplying jet fuel/diesel piston engines developed in the Thielert days, but it also has a brand-new 3.0 litre V6 turbodiesel in development, one that will operate on a range of heavy fuels. It has already flown, in a Reiner Stemme UAV, and is expected to be certified for 2017 complete with that craft. Bringing small UAV operations firmly into the age of big data and the internet of things, Aeryon Labs launched Aeryon Live at the show. According to David Proulx, Aeryon Live is a web- based “software as a service” platform that delivers live streaming video and telemetry from the aircraft to remote viewers anywhere in the world, with end- to-end security and low latency. The platform also provides online fleet management and equipment management capability for commercial and public safety operators, enabling them to see what their UAVs and operators are doing at any time, and prove compliance to regulators and insurers. He also described Aeryon Live as the foundation for preventative maintenance and programmatic maintenance, repair and overhaul. A SkyRanger quadcopter on the Aeryon stand pointed its thermal camera down the aisle and streamed its pictures and telemetry to a screen elsewhere on the stand via the internet. The data travelled across bonded cellular connections (up to six) into the company’s cloud, then back into the convention centre’s infrastructure and into a browser running on a PC on the booth. Proulx said the “glass-to-glass” latency was only 5 s and that he had seen it as low as three. This, he said, allows decision-making in an enterprise or police department to be centralised, and collective expertise to be focused on what the UAV is seeing and doing. For pilot and fleet management, he continued, rather than trusting people to fill out forms, the system pulls live data off the airframe and sends it securely to the cloud for processing and analysis. This enables managers to drill into the records for any flight of any UAV to see a visual record of where it went, whether it strayed into controlled or restricted airspace, what assets such as airframes, batteries and payloads were used, how high and how fast it went and who was flying it. No special client-side application is needed to see the data, just a web browser and log-in credentials. On the aircraft side, the system logs data on the performance and use of all the components, which have embedded sensors. Then analytics Unmanned Systems Technology | June/July 2016 Technify Motors has a 3.0 litre V6 turbodiesel in development