Uncrewed Systems Technology 047 l Aergility ATLIS l AI focus l Clevon 1 UGV l Geospatial insight l Intergeo 2022 report l AUSA 2022 report I Infinity fuel cell l BeeX A.IKANBILIS l Propellers focus I Phoenix Wings Orca

68 Show report | Intergeo 2022 ElevonX attended Intergeo to show that it had progressed its plans to make a larger version of its Sierra VTOL UAV, called the Tango (see UST 42, February/ March 2022), with a mock-up of the 19 kg MTOW craft at its stand. “The Tango is now in production and is being beta-tested with AIRlabs Austria, who are trialling it with their own sensors, infrastructure and equipment to see how different customers could use it,” said Matej Meglic. “Notably, this VTOL-transitioning UAV can land on water,” he added. “We were approached by the Slovenian Navy because its ships sometimes need to move to different locations before their UAVs have returned, so the Tango can land and wait for at least 3 hours to be picked up.” When landing on water, the survey payload is retracted inside a watertight chamber. The chamber measures 45 x 23 x 23 cm to enable large UAV gimbals to be integrated. Also, the T-Motor lift and pusher propulsion motors installed about the Tango’s booms and rear are IP-rated to withstand being submerged in water, and a sealing agent is applied between all the hull joints to prevent water ingress there. The Tango has a 3 m wingspan and a top airspeed of 125 kph. Its endurance is 2.5 hours when configured for fully electric, battery-powered flight, although it can also be equipped for gasoline-hybrid flight to extend its flight time to 6 hours. Hydrogen fuel cells can also be installed, with tests of hydrogen-electric flight planned for the future. SBG Systems showcased its Quanta Micro board, its new MEMS- based INS developed as a highly SWaP- and cost-optimised solution capable of providing direct georeferencing in UAV and land-based surveying missions. “The Quanta Micro is a high- performance GNSS-aided INS that integrates our tactical-grade Pulse-40 IMU, an onboard 8 Gbyte data logger, web interfaces supporting NTRIP, FTP and NTP/PTP, and external connectivity through Ethernet, UART, CAN bus, odometer and DLV,” said Dr Ryan Keenan. The Quanta Micro INS measures 50 x 37 x 23 mm and weighs 38 g, consuming up to 1.1 W in normal operation. Roll and pitch are outputted at an accuracy of up to 0.03°, or 0.02 º if RTK processing is used (and 0.015 º is achievable with PPK). Dr Keenan also discussed SBG’s Qinertia PPK software, noting that the solution allows for end-users to specify what kind of vehicular motion a data acquisition campaign was collected under. “That includes selecting the motion profiles from a detailed list of various automotive, airborne and marine craft, so the software’s extended Kalman filter understands what kinds of movement- based errors to recognise and then tunes the sensor fusion algorithms to provide the optimal behaviour of the INS,” he said. Phase One exhibited its range of high-end aerial imaging solutions for different UAV and piloted aircraft integrators, with two solutions proving particularly interesting to the show’s attendees. Of the two, the smaller is the P3 payload, a three-axis gyro-stabilised system for plug-and-play integration of Phase One’s iXM100 cameras with small UAVs. The cameras provide 100 MP imagery for high-resolution inspection and mapping missions, and the P3 weighs about 2.6 kg. “The P3 camera-gimbal combination consistently captures sub-millimetre images of the most complex structures such as high-voltage power structures, wind turbines, dams and bridges,” said Robert Bosch. The gimbal can interface over MAVLink, DJI and Auterion protocols for integration with a range of UAV platforms and autopilots. The lenses are interchangeable from 35 mm to 150 mm depending on the level of detail needed for a given job. December/January 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology SBG’s Quanta Micro Phase One’s P3 camera gimbal