USE Network launch I UAV Works VALAQ l Cable harnesses l USVs insight l Xponential 2020 update l MARIN AUV l Suter Industries TOA 288 l Vitirover l AI systems l Vtrus ABI

14 Platform one Dr Donough Wilson Dr Wilson is innovation lead at aviation, defence, and homeland security innovation consultants, VIVID/ futureVision. His defence innovations include the cockpit vision system that protects military aircrew from asymmetric high-energy laser attack. He was first to propose the automatic tracking and satellite download of airliner black box and cockpit voice recorder data in the event of an airliner’s unplanned excursion from its assigned flight level or track. For his ‘outstanding and practical contribution to the safer operation of aircraft’ he was awarded The Sir James Martin Award 2018/19, by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. Paul Weighell Paul has been involved with electronics, computer design and programming since 1966. He has worked in the real-time and failsafe data acquisition and automation industry using mainframes, minis, micros and cloud-based hardware on applications as diverse as defence, Siberian gas pipeline control, UK nuclear power, robotics, the Thames Barrier, Formula One and automated financial trading systems. Ian Williams-Wynn Ian has been involved with unmanned and autonomous systems for more than 20 years. He started his career in the military, working with early prototype unmanned systems and exploiting imagery from a range of unmanned systems from global suppliers. He has also been involved in ground-breaking research including novel power and propulsion systems, sensor technologies, communications, avionics and physical platforms. His experience covers a broad spectrum of domains from space, air, maritime and ground, and in both defence and civil applications including, more recently, connected autonomous cars. Unmanned Systems Technology’s consultants Xilinx has developed a high-capacity field programmable gate array (FPGA) that enables reconfigurable machine learning in space (writes Nick Flaherty). “Machine learning in space is in its nascent stage but will start to gain ground in the next four or five years,” said Minal Sawant, space systems architect at Xilinx The Ultrascale Kintex FPGA is built on a 20 nm process, compared to the 65 nm process used for previous space- qualified Virtex devices released 10 years ago. Using a 20 nm process provides up to four times the logic capacity, with 633 logic blocks and 10 times the digital signal processing with 2760 DSP slices, as well as 32 serialiser/deserialiser high- speed interfaces. To handle machine learning calculations, the FPGA adds wider 27 x 18 multiplier blocks and extra accumulator blocks which otherwise would have to be implemented in the logic array. The device is qualified from -55 to +125 C and withstands a total dose of 100 krad and single-event latch-up of more than 80 MeVcm 2 /mg. This is the requirement for a geostationary orbit, but less than that for low-Earth orbit designs. It is packaged in a 40-pin ceramic package to withstand the vibration on take-off. The FPGA can be reprogrammed by changing the 192 Mbit bit file that configures the device. Up to three separate bit files can be stored in a 1 Gbit non-volatile memory. That means the function of the FPGA can be completely changed. “The Ultrascale Kintex has true unlimited in-orbit reconfigurability – you can send a new bit file and change the design; there is no limit,” said Sawant. “You can store the bit file in non-volatile memory before launch. Another way is to make a change via the onboard computer, for example for a bug fix.” The reliability of the reprogramming is handled by the hardwired configuration manager in the chip. This constantly checks the bit stream and compares it with a known value in the non-volatile memory which holds a ‘golden’ file. This is usually done at the frame level, where there are 40, 32-bit words in a frame. The chip is designed with some triple module redundant elements such as three versions of the embedded MicroBlaze processor. Space vehicles Changing FPGA June/July 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology Diagram of the reconfigurable FPGA for use in space