Unmanned Systems Technology 026 I Tecdron TC800-FF I Propellers I USVs I AUVSI 2019 part 1 I Robby Moto UAVE I Singular Aircraft FlyOx I Teledyne SeaRaptor I Simulation & Testing I Ocean Business 2019 report

7 Platform one Florida-based Aergility has unveiled a design for a UAV that uses a patented form of managed autorotation to recharge its batteries during flight (writes Rory Jackson). “The Atlis is essentially a cross between a multi-copter and a gyroplane,” said James Vander Mey of Aergility. “It takes-off like a multi-copter, using some battery electricity to power the eight electric motors. “After the transition into forward flight, which is powered by a rear-mounted gasoline engine, the flight controller adjusts the aircraft’s pitch, roll and yaw attitude via the speed of the electric motors. And it does that in a way that the rotors operate near autorotation.” Doing that means the amount of power collectively consumed by the electric motors is either zero or near zero throughout horizontal flight. The battery pack is recharged during flight by driving the pitch upwards slightly past the autorotation point to have the motors Digital signal processing specialist Ceva has launched a software development kit (SDK) to accelerate the development of simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithms on its hardware (writes Nick Flaherty). The Ceva-SLAM SDK combines the hardware, software and interfaces required to enable an efficient SLAM implementation into a wide range of autonomous control systems. It includes a detailed interface from a processor core to offload the SLAM blocks to the Ceva- XM6 digital signal processing (DSP) core. These building blocks support both being driven by the airstream (thus using them as generators). A 25% scale model was on display at the company’s stand at AUVSI Xponential 2019, and the full-scale UAV is expected to have a 385 kg MTOW, while offering 180 kg of payload and fuel capacity, a cruising speed of 160 kph and a fuel consumption rate of 15-19 litres/hour. “We’ve been developing this for four fixed- and floating-point processing to extend the device’s battery life. They include capabilities for image processing such as feature detection, feature descriptors, feature-matching and linear algebra with matrix manipulation and linear equation-solving. This enables a full SLAM tracking module to run on the Ceva DSP at 60 frames/second with a power consumption of only 86 mW. The SDK can also be used with Ceva’s NeuPro machine learning accelerator cores. It also includes the Ceva-CV standard library of OpenCV-based functions for vision processing, optimised for the years, and have a year’s worth of testing this physical model. We had to develop a flight controller from scratch because of all the lessons we’re learning as we develop it,” Vander Mey said. Development of the full-size prototypes is expected to begin later this year. It will take roughly 18 months to complete the engineering, tooling, construction and initial flight testing. Ceva-XM and NeuPro. This uses pre- optimised kernels for target applications, speeding up development. The Ceva-VX software handles all the system resource requirements, including data transfers, memory transactions and kernel execution, abstracting the system architecture and automating frame handling. There is also a real-time operating system scheduler that handles task prioritisation and switching, as well as a link driver that manages the comms channels and system drivers to abstract the CPU- DSP interface and enable automatic task offloading from the CPU to the DSP. UAV recharges during flight Kit boost for SLAM codes Airborne vehicles Control systems Unmanned Systems Technology | June/July 2019 Aergility’s Atlis is a cross between a multi-copter and a gyroplane