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32 Dossier | UAV Works VALAQ family Ortiz explains, although a 4G system will be part of what the final system becomes. However, the vehicle uses the MAVLink protocol that was designed primarily for communicating between ground stations and small UAVs. The VALAQ’s flight is completely automatic once programmed and can be managed from an Android tablet or a PC running Linux; there is an optional joystick for manual control. Also, Ortiz says, the 4G installation enables monitoring and control of the vehicle from another base station located anywhere and with a 4G link. The comms hardware aboard the aircraft includes dipole antennas and an associated printed circuit board. The mission management software is a custom version of QgroundControl, which runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, and also supports multiple autopilots including PX4 Pro and ArduPilot as well as any vehicle that communicates using MAVLink. Key features include mission planning for autonomous flight, a map display showing the vehicle’s position, track, waypoints and instrument readouts, plus video streaming with instrument display overlays. It also supports management of multiple UAVs. Payloads and integration Data and power support for payloads include MAVLink, pulse width modulation and Ethernet interfaces, plus 5 and 12 V electrical sockets rated at up to 20 W each. In addition to NextVision’s Colibri 2, payloads integrated so far include FLIR Systems’ Vue Pro thermal camera and a custom sensor deployment system. Weighing 180 g and measuring 50 mm in diameter and 81 mm tall, the Colibri 2 is a stabilised turret housing an infrared sensor and a daylight electro-optical camera. The system also has a 20x optical zoom lens with an additional 2x electronic zoom that brings the total magnification capability to 40x. The imaging IR sensor is a 640 x 480 element focal plane array. The system is designed to provide images sharp enough to read vehicle number plates and recognise faces, says NextVision. The turret provides a field of regard (the field of view of the sensors plus the angle through which they can move) of +45/- 90 º in pitch and ±180 º in roll. The FLIR Vue Pro is a thermal camera, a thermal measurement instrument and a recorder in one that measures 2.26 x 1.75 in with the lens and weighs between 3.25 and 4 oz, depending on the configuration. Its core sensor is an uncooled vanadium oxide microbolometer. The payload dispenser is essentially a removable magazine that can hold up to eight golf ball-sized sensors that can be dropped into a forest fire, for example, to provide data from selected points over an extended period. They can be dropped one at a time on pre-programmed waypoints and controlled through the kind of software that can trigger a stills camera, Ortiz explains. The VALAQ 120 used the combination of the FLIR Vue Pro and the sensor dispenser in a firefighting demonstration in Spain known as project Ethon. It was a cooperative effort that involved the Valencian Innovation Agency, the Valencian Polytechnic University, smart technologies and comms house ETRA and firefighting technology specialist Pyro as well as UAV Works. The Ethon project’s goal was to develop a firefighting information management system for use in advanced command posts. The idea is to help firefighters to make decisions based on real-time thermal surface scanning and key indicative data from the sensors dropped by the UAV to create a map of hotspots from which a fire might reignite after being extinguished. Ortiz reports that the payload dispensing system was the most challenging to integrate, as sensor deployment affects the aerodynamics and changes the vehicle’s weight in flight by about 500 g, but it is a critical capability. “Having a cargo bay available on the aircraft’s centre of gravity was truly a go/no-go feature,” he emphasises. Flight testing To date, the flight test programme has logged almost 500 hours on all the development aircraft. Five prototypes were built through the programme as a whole, the first three being very different and the last two very similar, with some slight differences incorporated to test different payload configurations. June/July 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology Safe landings require software that can detect the shock of initial ground contact and initiate deployment of the forward landing gear leg