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54 the years the software modules have multiplied into what we have now – almost like an app store for case-specific professional inspection reports.” Last November the company announced that it has linked up its defect mapping reports to enterprise software company SAP, giving SAP users the option to send rectification work orders directly from the H3 Zoom interface. We spoke with Robot Aviation about its SkyView GCS software, which originally started development in 2003 as part of an r&d programme called the PRST (Portable Remote Sensor data Terminal) funded by the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration. “The programme was aimed at building the first NATO Stanag 4586-compliant GCS software in Sweden,” explained Niklas Nyroth. “In 2009, the PRST software was completely rewritten using an event- driven N-tier architecture, and on that basis in June that year, Version 1.0 of the SkyView GCS software was released as its own product. The latest version is 2.6.0, which was released in June last year, and the software has been used by more than 30 organisations – primarily UAS manufacturers – around the world.” Through this software, operators can control any number of UAVs at once (limited primarily by computer hardware), while viewing payload data streams, planning waypoints, setting geofences, monitoring subsystems’ performance, and configuring and logging many more values. As well as being based on Stanag 4586 (which ensures interoperability between UAV systems to NATO CONOPS requirements), the SkyView GCS is designed to run on any Windows computer with 2 Gbytes of RAM and a 2 GHz Intel CPU (as well as DirectX 11), control any UAV while displaying any required telemetry data, and allow customer-specified displays, plug-ins, data replays and scalability. Also, a MAVLink bridge is implemented to enable use in military Stanag 4586 networks as well as commercial MAVLink networks. “Stanag 4586 and MAVLink are not so different when it comes to functionality. Both standards are built up around flight information such as waypoint navigation, loitering, launch & recovery, and operation of gimballed cameras, laser rangefinders and ADS-B transponders,” Nyroth said. The software has been developed using Visual Studio and C#, with plug-ins such as video processing and display written in C++. All the source code is version- controlled using the Git tool, to allow changes in the source code to be tracked during the software development phase, with automatic detection of build errors being reported to the development team. In the user interface, real-time overlays of video feeds are available in map and 3D terrain displays from the UAV, using digital video standards such as MPEG-1, 2, 4 and H.264, with a typical internal latency of less than 100 ms. Video and telemetry recordings are synchronised down to 50 ms, and the operator can take photo snapshots as well as record local video snippets for fast external distribution. The company also offers a range of SDKs to users for enhancing their SkyView GCS and integrating new third- party UAVs. These include the VSM C++ SDK, written in C/C++ to allow UAV manufacturers and integrators to easily integrate a new UAV into the NATO Stanag 4586 network across operating systems including Linux, MacOS and QNX, and specific SDKs for integrating Collins Aerospace’s Piccolo autopilot and weControl’s wePilot autopilot. We caught up with Sentient Vision Systems, which updated us on its Visual Detection And Ranging (ViDAR) payload, which has been deployed on unmanned systems for the US Coast Guard, the Royal Australian Navy and others since 2016. It is currently in its second generation, ViDAR v2.0, and is at a TRL of 9. As reported in UST 9 (August/ September 2016), ViDAR is an airborne persistent, wide area maritime search system that operates as an optical radar. It has embedded proprietary software for autonomously detecting and geo-locating objects on the ocean surface to provide operators with detailed images of them that other search methods often miss. The sensor has recently been upgraded to incorporate IR cameras as well as the standard EO sensor, for operating in night and low-light conditions December/January 2021 | Unmanned Systems Technology The SkyView GCS from Robot Aviation can control any number of UAVs at once