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19 turn of the 20th century. He uses this approach to create very precise natural language descriptions of what a system is expected to do. “In the old days, we called it requirements analysis; these days I call it functional definition,” he says. “If you do it right, you can provide a level of definition practically down to pseudocode from a breakdown of what you are trying to do. It is all about understanding the activity and functionality in a system.” Describing a system Hasinski credits Wittgenstein with writing the first structured text, Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus . In systems engineering, the text is structured in block diagrams containing precise descriptions of a system’s functions. If you can get that far in your analysis, he says, you can get it to a pseudocode that a programmer can understand and turn into software. His first application of functional definition to an unmanned system was to Meggitt’s Voodoo, a propeller-driven vehicle designed to rival high-speed jet-powered targets, which proved a challenging project. “I joined Meggitt initially on a two-week contract to work on the autopilot, but all I managed to do in that time was to tell them that it needed six months to sort out, which they gave me,” he says. “And I delivered that in six months – an autopilot definition in a software description that a coder could understand.” The key was making the leap between the highest level instruction – “We need an autopilot” – and the much more precise “This is how you code it” he says. “The coder can’t take that first instruction, you need someone to interpret the requirement.” The other challenge lay in getting the prototype into the air for its first flight on a tight deadline when the pneumatic launcher being developed for it elsewhere was six months late. “If we didn’t get a video of the Voodoo in flight to the Meggitt board by a certain date, which was only about four weeks away, the project was going to be canned and I’d be out of a job‚” he says. At around 200 kg, the Voodoo prototype was much too heavy for the bungee launcher used for a smaller, Banshee target. The launcher’s weight limit was 75 kg, so the Voodoo had Julian Hasinski | In conversation Unmanned Systems Technology | December/January 2018 Hasinski mentors students at Cranfield University, challenging them in areas including autonomy, control, automation and artificial intelligence (Courtesy of Cranfield University) Hasinski’s future ambitions include advancing the technology of electric aircraft, which will also be important for UAVs (Courtesy of Raytheon) If we didn’t get a video of the Voodoo in flight to the Meggitt board by a certain date, the project was going to be canned