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53 Narma is a spin-out from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, based in Daejeon, which produces technologies and testing systems for tiltrotor UAVs. The company’s latest creation is the AF100 UAV. As Kijung Kwon said, “The ‘AF’ stands for Air Freight, and ‘100’ refers to the distance in centimetres between its wing-mounted tiltrotors.” The AF100 has a MTOW of 9 kg when fully loaded with batteries and payload, a maximum airspeed of 120 kph, and a recommended flight endurance of 20 minutes (although the energy efficiency of the tiltrotor in flight can increase the safe maximum flight time to 25 minutes or more), and a wingspan of just over 100 cm, as indicated. “One of the principal applications we see for the AF100 is to save lives by delivering AEDs [automated external defibrillators] at distances of up to 5 km in 3 minutes,” Kwon explained. “The ‘golden time’ for saving someone suffering a cardiac arrest is 4 minutes, but the average arrival time for the emergency services is 9 minutes. Research indicates that delivery UAVs like the AF100 can increase the survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests from 8% to 40%.” As well as transitioning between VTOL and horizontal cruise by panning their motors from 90 º to 0 º , the tiltrotors on the AF100 (and Narma’s other UAVs) have controllable propeller pitch angles, enabling them to be designed and controlled as bicopters rather than the quadrotor or tricopter configurations seen on most VTOL-transitioning aircraft. Geospatial solutions company Skyline Software Systems has launched PhotoMesh UAV, a 3D reconstruction software tool for creating accurate and photorealistic 3D models and 2D maps based on imagery and video captured by unmanned aircraft in survey and mapping operations. “PhotoMesh UAV processes video and image data inputs to output geo- referenced 3D meshes and point clouds in 3DML, Ortho, DSM, DTM and other file formats,” explained Eatay Ben Shechter. Skyline’s TerraExplorer GIS software – which is offered as a complimentary system – can then be used to pair external 3D and 2D datasets with the models constructed in PhotoMesh UAV, including vector layers and shape files, to produce overlays that show or simulate critical analytical information for different use-cases. For example, it can include overlays for changes over time in slopes and other geographical features for mine surveys, or simulations of new power lines or cell towers and their propagation levels for city planners. It can also create translucent buildings with visible interiors and escape routes for firefighters and other emergency services. Unusually for these types of software platforms, PhotoMesh UAV’s aerial triangulation incorporates nadir, oblique and close-range photography (as well as Lidar data) in its 3D reconstructions. Other features such as edge extraction enable high-resolution recreation of structural details (to show building decay, for example) that is accurate to up to 1 cm depending on the survey equipment used. PhotoMesh UAV’s processing will preserve the resolution of the dataset through to the model – hence a set of 5 cm-accurate images will be processed into a 3D digital model with 5 cm resolution. “Through our SkylineGlobe cloud server, we can host all our users’ datasets to securely stream it to their employees and end-users around the world. That will save them having to invest in terabytes of storage, cybersecurity and interfacing,” Shechter added. “For example, we’re working with AirMap to make high-resolution 3D models of its JobSight construction surveys available to end-users, via our software and cloud services. That means building companies and their stakeholders can accurately track project progress from anywhere in the world.” We caught up with VectorNav for a continued discussion about its new Tactical Embedded series of INSs, particularly regarding several new key functions that can be integrated within the 10.5 cm 3 form factors of the VN-210E and VN-310E. “Something else that’s quite new to our products is the integration of an onboard multi-frequency GNSS receiver,” Jakub Maslikowski said. “It’s capable of RTK and PPK, as well as taking signals from the L1, L2, E1, and E5b bands across the GPS and Galileo constellations, with SBAS CUAV Expo Americas 2020 | Report Unmanned Systems Technology | October/November 2020 Narma’s AF100 tiltrotor has a MTOW of 9 kg