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12 Platform one December/January 2017 | Unmanned Systems Technology Dr Donough Wilson Dr Donough Wilson is innovation lead at VIVID/ futureVision, which specialises in game- changing thinking for defence, homeland security, and both manned and unmanned aviation innovations. He was first to propose the automatic tracking and satellite download of airliner black box data, technology which is now being adopted. His defence innovations include the automatic cockpit vision system that protects military aircrew from asymmetric high-energy laser attack. As a pilot, he has more than 3000 hours of flying experience in both military and civil environments, and is currently a flying instructor and a flight test examiner. Paul Weighell Paul has been involved with electronics, computer design and programming since 1966. He has worked in the real-time and failsafe data acquisition and automaton industry using mainframes, minis, micros and cloud-based hardware on applications as diverse as defence, Siberian gas pipeline control, UK nuclear power, robotics, the Thames Barrier, Formula One and automated financial trading systems. Ian Williams-Wynn Ian has been involved with unmanned and autonomous systems for more than 20 years. He started his career in the military working with early prototype unmanned systems and exploiting imagery from a range of unmanned systems from global suppliers. He has also been involved in ground-breaking research including novel power and propulsion systems, sensor technologies, communications, avionics and physical platforms. His experience covers a broad spectrum of domains from space, air, maritime and ground, and in both defence and civil applications including, more recently, connected autonomous cars. Unmanned Systems Technology’s consultants LightWare Optronics in South Africa has developed what it believes to be the smallest and lightest Lidar laser ranging system for UAVs (writes Nick Flaherty). The LW20 was developed in response to a growing number of requests for small, lightweight, laser sensors for commercial UAVs, said James Portman, managing director of LightWare Optoelectronics. “Laser-based sensors offer unprecedented performance for above- ground altitude measurement, obstacle sensing and mapping,” he said. “Unfortunately, most high-performance Lidar sensors have been bulky, heavy and expensive, but the LW20 is half the size of a matchbox and weighs less than 20 g.” It uses a novel encryption and decryption system in its laser signals. The outgoing laser pulses are encoded with a unique key, and the signal detection and processing system is configured with the corresponding decoding key. Each Lidar is able to recognise only its own signature, and after every reading the keys are changed. The advantage of this technology is that any number of Lidar systems can operate in the same area, looking at the same targets without ever producing false readings. Also, background light from sunshine, headlights or street lights appears as incorrectly coded signals and is not recognised by the decoding system. Collision avoidance is characterised by an emphasis on the closest signals, while mapping systems need to give measurements of close as well as more remote objects. The LW20 outputs the distance to the first and last signals every time a reading is taken, a capability that is normally found only in high-end mapping Lidars. Another key design requirement for the LW20 was having a water-resistant housing to allow for operation in poor weather, along with electromagnetic shielding to minimise interference with other sensitive equipment such as GPS. “The rationale behind the housing was that we needed an IP67-rated enclosure made from aluminium, but this had to be light enough to have a negligible effect on the load-carrying capacity of small drones,” said Portman. “In addition to the static mass, we wanted to minimise the moment of inertia so that the unit could be integrated into small scanning mechanisms driven by servos or brushless dc motors to create 2D or 3D maps.” The sensor doesn’t need to scan using continuous rotation but can be swept over a limited angle using a reciprocating pattern. This direct beam steering can produce either narrow or wide coverage along with special patterns suited to the particular operating environment. Latest Lidar said to be the lightest UAV sensors The distance to the first and last signals is output every time a reading is taken; that’s normally found only in a high-end system