Unmanned Systems Technology 014 | Quantum Tron | Radio links and telemetry | Unmanned Aerial Vehicles | Protonex fuel cell | Ancillary systems | AUVSI 2017 Show report

47 UAVs | Insight as extending endurance when hovering into wind compared with conventional multirotor platforms or rotorcraft. The company has been working with construction firm Amey on sub-20 kg low-altitude, beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) aerial inspection remotely piloted aircraft systems. These are used to monitor assets such as electricity and gas transmission and distribution infrastructures, rail networks, water pipes and offshore electricity cables. The UAV design combines three technologies – high-precision GNSS, a miniature collision avoidance system and persistent BVLOS comms. The concept behind the design combines an aerofoil for high lift at low speed with low drag at high speed, and thrust vectoring mechanisms that require minimal energy to rotate as well as redundant controls. All of this supports flight manoeuvres such as turning without banking, rapid acceleration and deceleration, and hovering into the wind. The development of the VTOL wing used the FPGA-based myRIO system from National Instruments (NI) to develop the flight control system. The engineers at VTOL Technologies then used NI’s LabView software to develop the flight planning and flight operations ground control station tools. This combination provides rapid- prototyping capabilities that can handle large volumes of real-time telemetry and payload data. It also offers the ability to link the FPGA with other real-time hardware and software such as the inertial systems, laser altimeters, collision- avoidance technologies and precision GNSS. The LabView control design and simulation module, and system identification toolkit, were used to design, prototype and deploy the software within a single development environment and to save time. The myRIO system ran the custom code developed on LabView with deterministic performance with less than 1 µs loop cycles in real time. The flight control system successfully uses the time-critical loop to ensure deterministic data acquisition and control loop with no latency or jitter on a complex controller. Surveillance Surveillance applications need UAVs to operate in a wide range of conditions as well as with long endurance, so one developer, Rapid Composites, has unveiled a fully autonomous, amphibious and waterproof VTOL called the Bullray. It can be configured as a tri-, quad-, hex- or even an X4 copter depending on the lifting requirements of the application, and unlike some other VTOL systems it can operate in the rain. The 14.25 kg carbon fibre structure does not need a protective case, making it quick to deploy. The company designs and builds the IP65 waterproof chassis and works with industry partners such as FN Herstal for the launcher and Steiner Optics and FLIR Systems for the sensors. Using the launcher gives Bullray 10.5 kg of additional payload capacity, with a flight time of 15-20 minutes. Comms Higher endurance UAVs are opening up applications as aerial base stations. Facebook for example has been working on high-altitude solar-powered UAVs, Unmanned Systems Technology | June/July 2017 Verizon is using the RS-20 fixed-wing UAV to provide 4G cellular data coverage from an altitude of 1 km (Courtesy of American Aerospace)