Unmanned Systems Technology 012 | AutoNaut USV | Connectors | Unmanned Ground Vehicles | Cobra Aero A33i | Intel Falcon 8+ UAV | Propellers | CES Show report

81 CES 2017 | Show report of a GNSS module with a pseudo- hyperspectral optical flow sensor and Lidar sensors. That provides better position tracking capabilities with higher precision than using ultrasonic and regular visual sensors, said the company. UAV maker PowerVision has developed an underwater robot to help fishing enthusiasts. The PowerRay dives down to 30 m and uses 2.4 GHz wi-fi to transmit images and data over a distance up to 80 m back to a smartphone.  It also uses an optional add-on sonar sensor, PowerRay Fishfinder, to detect fish as well as transmitting images of them and the underwater landscape along with temperature data. The system can detect fish up to 40 m below the robot, taking the total diving depth to 70 m with a precision of up to 10 cm, said Wally Zheng of PowerVision Technology.  The camera has a 100 º wide-angle lens and captures MP4 video at 30 fps, with burst mode photo shooting at 5 fps in 12 MP, 1080p real-time image and video streaming, and integrated adjustable light for photography and videography. The 3.5 kg craft can operate for four hours under water. Unmanned Systems Technology | February/March 2017 measures 65 x 45 x 15 mm and weighs 40 g. It supports full 1080p HD video at 60 fps, zero latency and a range of 1000 m. The video modem uses both multiple in, multiple out (MIMO) antennas and OFDM coding combined with joint source channel coding (JSCC) to transmit the full HD 1080p60 video over a bandwidth of 40 MHz or 20 MHz. MIMO allows a big increase in data throughput and link robustness without additional bandwidth or increased transmit power. It does so by spreading the same total transmission power over the antennas to achieve an array gain that improves the spectral efficiency, allowing more bits per second per Hertz of bandwidth or to improve the link reliability. JSCC uses unequal error protection rather than providing equal protection to all bits. Traditional systems transmit packetised information at a rate that is below the worst-case channel capacity to avoid high bit error rate and frequent retry operations, leading to buffering that increases the latency. Instead, JSCC encodes the most significant bits with a stronger protection and the least significant bits with lower protection, reducing the effective bit error rate and avoiding the need to re-transmit the data. That means errors in the wireless channel are not noticed up to a certain level as they affect only the less important components of the video. That allows the modem to send very high resolution with very high quality and higher robustness without impacting on the latency, as the receiver can handle the information without the need to send acknowledgments to the transmitter. XDynamics has also developed algorithms to combine the output The XDynamics Evolve allows filmmakers to monitor framing and composition in real time The PowerRay detects fish and sends images of them to anglers’ smartphones