Unmanned Systems Technology 016 | Hydromea Vertex AUV | Power management systems | Unmanned Space Vehicles | Continental CD-155 turbodiesel | Swift 020 UAV | ECUs | DSEI 2017 Show report

17 different places on the aircraft and on the ground, he says. “What we are doing is putting together all the capabilities we have today, across air and sea,” says Moore. “An example of this is the AUSS submersible that can be used in a standalone mode and is now developing an autonomous capability.” The AUSS has a range of sensors and is intended to ‘deploy and forget’, sitting in a deep hibernation mode on the seabed until it is needed. It then works with the Halcyon autonomous surface vessel and the airborne Watchkeeper systems for applications such as pipeline inspection or mine clearing for the Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) programme. “MMCM is a UK-French development looking at taking the person out of the minefield, and AI is a key enabler – it provides awareness [from the sensors] plus learning,” says Moore. One element of this is integrating AI into a smart sensor architecture. “If a sensor is not able to perform a task it can hand over to another sensor without instruction, and that can be in a different craft,” he says. That same approach is being adopted in the air as Watchkeeper takes on more autonomy. “Watchkeeper-X is now controlled with a mouse click rather than a pilot, so we are moving from the pilot to a supervisor to an observer,” says Moore. Watchkeeper-X was tested with other platforms during the Unmanned Warrior exercise, delivering a range of feeds from the radar and EO/IR sensors back to a ground station. A key point was that its payload could be used from sea to land without the need for reconfiguration, moving from MMTI (maritime moving target indication) to GMTI, the ground moving target indication. Being able to move from one mode to the other is a key capability, Moore says. As mentioned, Thales is now adding autonomous operation to the Watchkeeper, which is key given its civilian airspace certification. Other projects such as Predator in the US and Sagem’s Patroller in France are also working towards that. This capability for use in civilian airspace came from Project Clare with the UK’s National Air Traffic Service, which established a procedure for the flight operation. Watchkeeper stays in contact with ATC in corridors set by the flight plan determined by the waypoints set at the ground control station. “Then, if you lose contact there is a ‘no communication return route’ that has been pre-set to a location or back to base, and that route is cleared by ATC,” says Moore. This complies with the NATO Stanag 4671 agreement on UAV system airworthiness requirements and allows Watchkeeper to operate in other NATO countries. Division of tasks This capability is now being extended with Project Elaine, which includes wider area regulatory control, Moore says, which will support more autonomous operation. Three Watchkeeper aircraft can be used in autonomous operation, with them dividing up a request for information. They work out the optimum areas for acquiring the requested information and interact with ATC to work out the flight routes to get there. “If you lose one craft, the other two talk and divide up the tasks, re-prioritising the flight management requirements,” says Moore. This requires AI in the aircraft Matt Moore | In conversation Unmanned Systems Technology | October/November 2017 The updated Watchkeeper-X platform has a range of more than 140 km with 16-plus hours of operation, a top speed of 95 knots and an operational ceiling of more than 15,000 ft (more than 5 km). It uses a 32 kg 620 W synthetic aperture radar operating in the Ku band (12.5-18 GHz) that can rotate through 360 º and operate at up to 20 km in strip mode and 15 km in spot mode, and can detect slow- moving vehicles or people at a range of 20 km. The 38 kg Compass IV electro-optic sensor system also includes a laser rangefinder. Watchkeeper-X The Watchkeeper was deployed alongside the Halcyon unmanned surface vessel as part of the Unmanned Warrior programme