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10 Platform one December/January 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology Lockheed Martin has demonstrated coordination of large and small UAVs for the first time in a fire-fighting scenario (writes Nick Flaherty). The company has used its small Inago 2 quadcopter and Desert Hawk fixed-wing UAV to fly over an area, identifying stranded individuals to pick up. The data is routed through a K-MAX large unmanned helicopter that holds station above the area, to direct another large unmanned helicopter, the Sikorsky Autonomy Research Aircraft (SARA), to assist. SARA can be used with very limited user input, so the demonstration had SARA pick up a child and return to base automatically. “The K-MAX is used for autonomous fire suppression, building a water break, and also as a relay node at a waiting point to deliver imagery back to ground controllers and data from other UAVs,” said Igor Cherepinsky, director of Autonomy Programs at Sikorsky, which is now part of Lockheed Martin. “All the data can come directly to SARA but what we were showing was how these would be used operationally,” he said. “Having direct line of sight back to other assets may not be possible, so what you do is relay coordinates back through other assets.” SARA has three Lidar sensors and four cameras with detection in short infrared, electro-optic as well as radar. “We have several layouts, and this is getting us close to what we would field in a commercial system,” said Cherepinsky. The software suite builds a world model so that even if the sensors can’t see through smoke or dust, it uses data from previous scans as part of the model. Blaze of glory for swarm test UAVs The K-MAX and SARA helicopters take data from a small autonomous quadcopter and fixed-wing UAV to locate and rescue people trapped by forest fires