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76 current a given circuit needs to carry, Minco’s circuits can be customised with more copper or less (typically between 5 microns and 2 mm). The acrylics and polyimides scale accordingly, the latter also being quantifiable to meet vibration, shock and environmental requirements. They can also be customised with through-hole and surface mount components, as well as a wide range of connector types. For UAVs operating in cold climates, the flex circuits can also be designed to incorporate self-limiting flexible heaters for applications such as de-icing antennas, stabilising battery temperatures and eliminating condensation on gimbal lenses. As well as being able to integrate flexible heaters, Minco can also integrate sensors into its circuits, thereby reducing the number, cost and weight of connectors on a given platform. Silicon Valley-based Birdstop told us it has developed a ‘drone in a box’ automated docking and recharging station to reduce personnel requirements and maintenance-related downtime in UAS field operations such as aerial inspections of infrastructure and cash crops. “The Birdstop system enables repeated, semi-autonomous deployment of fully charged UAVs on demand, swapping batteries between and during operations and uploading collected data for further analysis – all with operations teams monitoring them over the internet instead of driving back and forth to where the remote assets being surveyed are located,” said Keith Miao. “As infrastructure often runs through hazardous or remote terrain, it can be unsafe as well as time-consuming and labour-intensive to transport personnel repeatedly into the field for data collection.” The currently available version of the docking system is the Birdstop Guardian, which has been developed for smaller quadcopter platforms similar in size to the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise. The landing plate measures about 600 x 600 mm, mechanically extending outwards from (and retracting into) the metallic ‘docking bay’ inside the Guardian station. “Inside the station we have computer vision-guided precision robotics, battery bays, power management units, comms equipment, temperature regulating systems and a computing suite to facilitate data transfer and processing,” Miao said. “We do not develop our own UAV; instead the Birdstop Guardian taps into the camera and autopilot of existing DJI- or Pixhawk-powered UAVs.” The company aims to adapt the system to other current UAVs as well as those expected in the future. Aggie Air, a research operation at Utah State University’s Water Lab, was walking the aisles of the exhibition floor to discuss its BlueJay UAV, a battery- electric aircraft with a 3 m wingspan that can fly for 200 minutes on a single battery charge. “Its design has a reversed gull wing, to separate the air flowing over the wings from the air hitting the fuselage,” explained Daniel Robinson. “We’ve selected composites to keep the airframe as light as possible, and chosen our motor to provide just enough power for cruising to keep it from being oversized or overweight. We also chose one battery pack to power everything, to avoid needing separate batteries for propulsion, avionics and so on.” Several iterations of the board and the UAV were built and tested, with incremental changes to the wing planform and chord, as well as other components, to maximise flight time on a 22 Ah lithium-polymer battery pack. “Almost all the hardware has been custom-designed and rendered by us through SolidWorks, except for the motor, which is a COTS E-Flite motor,” Robinson said. “We were lucky enough to find a COTS motor that met our needs perfectly, communicates smoothly with our flight controller and BMS, and can be replaced in the field.” Light & Motion’s newest illuminator payload system is the Stella Pro CL 10000d, a 10,000 lumen light designed for integration into UAVs. It is also available in a smaller, 5000 lumen February/March 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology Birdstop Guardian’s automated UAS docking and recharging station