Unmanned Systems Technology 025 | iXblue DriX I Maintenance I UGVs I IDEX 2019 I Planck Aero Shearwater I Sky Power hybrid system I Delph Dynamics RH4 I GCSs I StreetDrone Twizy I Oceanology Americas 2019

56 Digest | Planck Aero Shearwater autopilot board such as a Pixhawk or the customer’s own. The camera detects the marker and works out the pitch, roll and heave (the vertical motion from waves or a rough track) of the landing platform. The board then takes data from the inertial measurement unit and other sensors on the UAV for the landing operation. In a third-party integration with a UAV manufacturer, the board just handles the take-off and landing. The customer supplies the camera module, mission planning software, payload and other components such as the radio system and the ground control system (GCS), although any of these elements can be provided as a bolt-on. The GCS is a significant element. It provides real-time streaming data back to the user, which has access to both the feed from the camera module and the payload at all times. At the moment, this is a regulatory requirement so that there is a pilot in the loop who can start and stop the mission but the aircraft is doing all the flying. For a third-party integration it is the responsibility of the UAV manufacturer and its GCS partner. The Shearwater Planck built its own ready-to-fly UAV to demonstrate the technology and provide a platform to easily develop custom variants. This then had to include the mission planning, autopilot and ground control software that would otherwise be part of a customer’s system. This also allowed Planck to demonstrate other capabilities of the system, such as repurposing the TX2 to handle image recognition algorithms and operate in a tethered mode. The UAV, called Shearwater, is a 700 mm diameter quadcopter. It has a modular payload bay with a maximum carrying capacity of 1 kg, although the most common payloads are EO/IR cameras on a gimbal that weigh a total of 500 g, for real-time situational awareness. The all-carbon fibre platform was designed for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to operate from trucks in the field. The Shearwater needed to be small enough to land on the back of a truck but big enough to carry a camera as the payload, and still have a significant mission time. The power comes from a six-cell lithium-polymer battery pack that provides up to 28 minutes of operation with a typical payload, although most missions are typically only 15 minutes, says Twining. That in part comes as a result of the ability to land on the moving platform, as the UAV does not have to return to its launch point. The Shearwater is used to monitor an area around a truck, providing video from the other side of a hill or down in a valley via a digital data link using AES encryption from Microhard. The data is fed to a 10 in Android tablet in the truck via a wi-fi comms module. This sits in the back of the truck and includes the Microhard downlink, an Ethernet connection and a wi-fi direct connection to the tablet that provides both the video from the UAV’s landing camera for the mission plan and the video feed from the payload. There is also a dashboard mount for the tablet but it is not very popular, says Twining. That is because users tend to want to get out of the vehicle while using the UAV, then drive to pick it up at another location. “We find that the wired Ethernet April/May 2019 | Unmanned Systems Technology The Shearwater was designed to be small enough to land on the back of a truck but still have a useful mission time