Unmanned Systems Technology 017 | AAC HAMR UAV | Autopilots | Airborne surveillance | Primoco 500 two-stroke | Faro ScanBot UGV | Transponders | Intergeo, CUAV Expo and CUAV Show reports

83 Quantum Systems attended Intergeo to unveil its newest UAV, the Trinity. It is a 5 kg fixed-wing craft with three motors and VTOL transition capability, similar to its quadrotor predecessor, the Quantum Tron (detailed in UST 14, June/July 2017). “We figured out that most missions from our customers are accomplished in 60 minutes, and mostly across areas no bigger than 500 hectares, so we set out to design a new, lighter aircraft around those parameters,” the company’s Armin Busse said. To make the aircraft lighter than the mainly carbon-composite Tron, which weighs 14 kg at MTOW, while still capable of carrying up to 500 g of payload (compared with the Tron’s 2 kg payload capacity), the new airframe was designed to incorporate Elapor foam throughout the wings and body. The machining of the patented material requires special tools, chemicals and negative moulds, but the overall speed of the process means the Trinity is expected to take far less time to manufacture than the Tron. Assembly is estimated to take about three minutes, using the company’s Trinity Lock Mechanism technique for fitting the wings, tail and nose (and their interface connectors) into the fuselage without having to use tools or fasteners. Following take-off and transition into horizontal flight, the operator can fold back the two forward propellers to save power, relying on just the tail- mounted rotor. Cruising speed is 60 kph, endurance is 60 minutes, and the Trinity has a comms range of 3 km. Autopilot-controlled payloads include NIR and NDVI-capable COTS cameras, which can produce data files such as digital terrain models, digital surface models, dense RGB point clouds (.XYZ or .LAS), or 3D models (.OBJ, .DXF, .PLY, or .STA). The payload compartment is designed with shock absorbers to counteract the effects of vibrations on the sharpness of images, and in future it will be designed to allow users to create their own payload configurations. Trimble debuted two new families of GNSS receivers for navigation, guidance and control of unmanned systems, released in the week before Intergeo. The BD940 series has the smaller form factor of the two, with the smallest, the BD940, measuring 51 x 41 x 7 mm and weighing 27 g. The two larger and heavier products, the BD940-INS and BX940 (the latter of which is the ruggedised, enclosed version of the former, with DE9 and DA29 connectors), come with integrated IMUs for readings on heading and attitude, as well as double the maximum update rate at 100 Hz. “We capture all the constellations currently available – Beidou, GLONASS, GPS – as well as the other systems coming up, such as Galileo or QZSS, in triple frequency,” said Omar-Pierre Soubra. The second family of boards, BD990, measure 100 x 60 x 11.6 mm, and weigh 54-60 g, with different systems in the series coming with features such as dual- antenna functionality, integrated IMU and a ruggedised enclosure. The two series come with Trimble’s new Maxwell 7 processor for GNSS, expanded to 336 channels – including GPS L1 C/A, L2E, L2C and L5 – surpassing the 220 channels in the Maxwell 6. “The Maxwell 7 is compatible mechanically with Maxwell 6 in connectors and SWaP, and is functionally the same,” Soubra said. Intergeo, CUAV Expo and CUAV Show | Show reports Unmanned Systems Technology | December/January 2018 Intergeo The Quantum Systems Trinity is similar to the company’s Tron, but lighter One of Trimble new BD990 GNSS receivers