16 February/March 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Dr Donough Wilson Dr Wilson is innovation lead at aviation, defence, and homeland security innovation consultants, VIVID/ futureVision. His defence innovations include the cockpit vision system that protects military aircrew from asymmetric high-energy laser attack. He was first to propose the automatic tracking and satellite download of airliner black box and cockpit voice recorder data in the event of an airliner’s unplanned excursion from its assigned flight level or track. For his ‘outstanding and practical contribution to the safer operation of aircraft’ he was awarded The Sir James Martin Award 2018/19, by the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. Paul Weighell Paul has been involved with electronics, computer design and programming since 1966. He has worked in the realtime and failsafe data acquisition and automation industry using mainframes, minis, micros and cloud-based hardware on applications as diverse as defence, Siberian gas pipeline control, UK nuclear power, robotics, the Thames Barrier, Formula One and automated financial trading systems. Ian Williams-Wynn Ian has been involved with uncrewed and autonomous systems for more than 20 years. He started his career in the military, working with early prototype uncrewed systems and exploiting imagery from a range of systems from global suppliers. He has also been involved in ground-breaking research including novel power and propulsion systems, sensor technologies, communications, avionics and physical platforms. His experience covers a broad spectrum of domains from space, air, maritime and ground, and in both defence and civil applications including, more recently, connected autonomous cars. Professor James Scanlan Professor Scanlan is the director of the Strategic Research Centre in Autonomous Systems at the University of Southampton, in the UK. He also co-directs the Rolls-Royce University Technical Centre in design at Southampton. He has an interest in design research, and in particular how complex systems (especially aerospace systems) can be optimised. More recently, he established a group at Southampton that undertakes research into uncrewed aircraft systems. He produced the world’s first ‘printed aircraft’, the SULSA, which was flown by the Royal Navy in the Antarctic in 2016. He also led the team that developed the ULTRA platform, the largest UK commercial UAV, which has flown BVLOS extensively in the UK. He is a qualified full-size aircraft pilot and also has UAV flight qualifications. Dr David Barrett Dr David Barrett’s career includes senior positions with companies such as iRobot and Walt Disney Imagineering. He has also held posts with research institutions including the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MIT and Olin College, where he is now Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics, and Principal Investigator for the Olin Intelligent Vehicle Laboratory. He also serves in an advisory capacity on the boards of several robotics companies. Uncrewed Systems Technology’s consultants Inertial Labs has developed an accelerometer range suitable for uncrewed navigation systems and a high-accuracy IMU for GNSS-denied navigation (writes Nick Flaherty). The self-contained, strap-down, three-axis accelerometers measure linear accelerations with a precision of 0.005 mg at a ±8g range. This comes from the design of the three-axis sensing to compensate for any drift and their experience in calibration. The TAA-308, TAA-315 and TAA-340 models measure accelerations within ranges of ±8g, ±15g and ±40g, respectively, with continuous built-in test (BIT) and temperature compensation. They are mathematically aligned to an orthogonal coordinate system, ensuring precision. The TAA accelerometer series has a bias in-run stability as low as 0.005 mg at a ±8g dynamic range, characterised by minimal noise, as low as 0.015 m/ sec/√hr for the velocity random walk (VRW) for the TAA-308, and high reliability, with a 500 ppm scale-factor repeatability over a year. They measure 28.5 x 19.5 x 13.6 mm and weigh 13 g, with a RS-422 data interface and discrete input/output (I/O) lines. The accelerometer is combined with a gyroscope for the IMU-NAV-200 inertial navigation unit, which has a bias in-run stability of 0.3 o/hr and an angular random walk (ARW) of 0.04 o/√hr. The tactical-grade IMU measures linear accelerations, angular rates, and pitch and roll with high accuracy for both motionless and dynamic applications. The IMU-NAV-200 offers static pitch and roll with an accuracy of 0.03o, and a dynamic pitch and roll accuracy of 0.06o. It measures 47 x 62.6 x 43.5 mm and weighs 155 g, with a RS-232 or RS-422 output. The IMU-NAV-200 was specifically designed for GNSS-denied guidance and navigation applications. Accelerometers Gathering speed With 0.005 mg precision
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