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94 In operation | Trinity F90+ Covid-19 sample courier “We also had to install an FPV camera – we went with the DJI FPV model – as safety regulations require that you have to have one to receive permissions for flying BVLOS operations. To be honest, that confers no tangible safety advantage, but regulations demand that the UAV’s pilot can see in front of the aircraft when flying beyond visual limits, regardless of navigational autonomy, systems intelligence or the fact that we have live ADS-B air traffic information via our GCS at all times.” Also, a robotic arm from Universal Robots was brought in as a platform for the Trinity F90+ to sit on and launch from. This forms part of a wider initiative that Quantum-Systems is moving towards. “As part of an autonomous UAV railway monitoring system for Deutsche Bahn – what we call our Project FreeRail – we are developing a framework for droneports,” Busse explains. “These will be self-sustaining hangars stocked with fully autonomous, self-checking UAVs with different payloads or payload- swapping machines, capable of launching and landing on demand for a range of services. “You could build one of these complexes next to a railway or power line, and in the event of an accident or bad weather, an operator can ping for a UAV on their smartphone. The UAV can then request a flight clearance, survey the requested stretch of land, and send the survey data to the cloud for analysis. The results of that would then be sent to the customer for them to decide what action to take.” Preparing for take-off In addition to installing the FPV camera and specialised payload (which took about 10 days), preparations for the trial flight included a number of shorter steps. “Much of that preparation was to do with selecting the route and gaining permissions from the relevant parties,” Busse says. “We had to check the air traffic carefully in the take-off and landing zones. “Almost immediately we decided that the take-off area should be the Theresienwiese, a large open space typically used for the Oktoberfest celebrations – although not during lockdown of course – and which we’d actually mapped last year for the Munich Police Department,” he says. “The Munich lab is in an urban area though, so that was a little harder, but it has a really big parking lot outside that’s fairly empty, so we used that as the landing spot.” Launching and landing approvals also had to be obtained from the relevant owners. For the Theresienwiese, that meant applying to the Munich Fire Department, which has authority over the area and airspace, but since Becker & Kollegen owns the car park at the landing end, approval was granted instantly. With those approvals, the Quantum- Systems team was able to go to Germany’s national civil aviation authority, the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, and submit proof of the approvals and the installation of the FPV camera in accordance with BVLOS requirements. “The rest was just setting up the UAV, GCS, robot arm and payload,” Busse says. “Waypoint setting took place in our mission planning software, QBase 3D.” Hirt adds, “Naturally, in line with our NTSD concept, the only touching of the samples before take-off was when the doctors put them into the special payload case for the Trinity F90+. “Because it was custom-designed it had the right number of slots for the tubes, the right protection and insulation against tolerable levels of shock and vibration. Temperature in this case wasn’t important, but the payload container could easily have been fitted with some thermal insulation.” Flying over Munich The total flight time of the Trinity F90+ was about six-and-a-half minutes. It took off from the Theresienwiese and ascended northwards before turning south-east towards Becker & Kollegen’s laboratory and flying in a straight line for 5.2 km, at an altitude of 100 m, with the populated urban areas of Munich passing below. As the UAV neared the laboratory’s parking lot, it turned southwards for a safe approach, descending to 30 m October/November 2020 | Unmanned Systems Technology Quantum-Systems 3D-printed a special payload for securely carrying the sample test tubes, and integrated an FPV camera beneath the Trinity F90+’s nose to comply with flight regulations