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54 “The design now has a dual antenna input for larger UAVs that need a heading output as well as positioning, and a USB port for quicker telemetry data downloads at the GCS,” said Simon Peng. “It also has a Bluetooth transmitter for those who don’t want to bother with a physical connector or cable for configurations, as well as RTK processing to give UAVs more accurate navigation.” The M100 also integrates 4G comms links, and has 8 Gbytes of internal memory for data logging. Cepton Lidar attended the show to showcase two new products for autonomous vehicles and other intelligent solutions used in agriculture and infrastructure mapping. “The Sora-P60Lite is a three-line scanner that updates at 380 Hz. That speed was a key objective to designing it for the fastest-moving UAVs working in high-density mapping missions,” explained Wei Wei. “Compared with our previous system, the Sora 200, we’ve doubled the maximum detection distance, to 200 m at 30% reflectivity [or 120 m at 10%]. The frame rate has also been almost doubled from the Sora 200’s 200 Hz.” To increase the range of its Lidar, Cepton first designed a new set of optics that would keep the same form factor as previous designs while collecting photons more efficiently, before refining the digital signal processing algorithms to extract signals from photonic ‘noise’ more effectively. Enhancing the frame rate required an iteration of the company’s micro-motion mechanical structure, with designs enabling higher frequencies of scans. The Sora-P60Lite weighs 580 g and measures 102 x 101 x 58 mm. Scans have a field of view of 60 x 16 º and an angular resolution of 0.22 º , with up to two returns on each laser pulse. Power consumption during normal operations is around 12 W, from an input voltage of 10-15 V. Cepton also unveiled its new Vista-P60, a grid-based Lidar scanner as opposed to the three-line configuration of the Sora-P60Lite. It was developed primarily for intelligent navigation, detection and landing systems in autonomous vehicles. It has the same range and accuracy (2 cm) as the Sora-P60Lite, as well as the same power and size requirements (although it weighs 900 g). Also, the system measures up to 320,000 points per second for a frame rate of 10 fps, although the frame rate can be doubled with up to two returns available. Septentrio attended the show to unveil two new INSs for UAV integration. They consist of the company’s satellite navigation receiver technology with IMUs and processors from SBG Systems installed. The first, the AsteRx-i S UAS, weighs 60 g and measures 70 x 475 x 20 mm. It comes with an interface board, which the company refers to as the ‘UAS board’, underneath the main navigation and interface board, to make it easier to integrate it onto a UAV’s autopilot or motherboard. “We’re mostly known for our GNSS receivers, but sensor fusion is becoming more and more important,” said Danilo Sabbatini. “So we designed this product for users who need to continue navigating and geo-referencing their survey data precisely when flying under bridges or through underpasses, and anywhere else when dead reckoning is needed to maintain position estimates in the absence of satellite signals.” Its INS outputs velocity that is accurate to 0.18 kph (0.05 m/s), or to 0.072 kph December/January 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology The M100 GNSS receiver from SinoGNSS Septentrio’s AsteRx-i S UAS INS Cepton Lidar’s Sora-P60 Lite scanner