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50 A lthough travel and safety restrictions prevented the AUVSI Xponential show from taking place in Boston and then Dallas this year, the Xponential virtual event nonetheless enabled exhibitors to unveil a wide array of new products and updates for users across the unmanned space. We spoke with a range of companies to learn about their most important new releases. Auterion told us about two new industry developments it has supported. The first is the unveiling of the Astro quadcopter, engineered by Freefly and powered by Auterion’s open source software for commercial and government end-users. The system can carry up to 1.5 kg, with an 8.3 kg MTOW, an empty weight of 3.16 kg and a maximum flight time of 38 minutes. “The system has been put through 185 hours of flight and simulated flight testing, and comes with complete payload control integrations for high- quality cameras such as the Sony a7R IV,” said Ben Simmen. “It also comes with an LTE connection to the cloud for real-time flight logging and data transmission over the air, as well as cloud APIs for integrating UAV operation data into end-users’ enterprise workflows.” As well as being embedded with Auterion’s Enterprise PX4 and Skynode solutions, the Astro’s autonomy is powered by a Cortex-A53 computer with navigation from a GNSS receiver supporting L1 and L2 GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo signal data. At time of writing, Freefly was taking orders, with the first units due to be shipped late last year. Auterion has also partnered with Esri to integrate the former’s Enterprise PX4 software with the latter’s Site Scan app, a cloud-based flight planning and data processing solution for UAV mapping, inspection, monitoring and other missions. This enables seamless operation of UAVs and payloads powered by the former within the latter’s user interface and workflows. By connecting through the Auterion Ground SDK to get the imagery data from UAV cameras, UAV operators and infrastructure owners will be able to view photography captured across worksites in real time in their Esri mapping software. The combined solution will be available to customers in the next few months. Rory Jackson reports on the latest unmanned systems technology developments unveiled at the Xponential virtual show held in October Virtually, still the biggest The Freefly Astro is now available with Auterion’s open source software, the latter having been announced at the event December/January 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology