company’s engineers are also investigating ways to cut away excess, overflowed resin using the press itself, saving time over having to post-trim overflows. The company has also recently finished a custom project for an undisclosed number of carbon propellers measuring 3 m in diameter, now delivered to its customer (an eVTOL manufacturer), to be certified by them. The project took approximately a year, and the manufacturing was performed in compliance with EASA CS-P standards on propeller integrity. “That involved CNC-machining a 3.5 m block for a mould, accounting closely for how the material would expand or shrink in different conditions throughout the production stages, controlling for those conditions across our workshops, and accounting in the design for bird strikes,” Mejzlik Jr continues. “There’s a spar in the front so that if a bird impacts, it only disrupts a small area, and we’re investigating how to apply this design feature into our normal-sized propellers too - all this stuff that’s normal in general and commercial aviation is quickly becoming normal for UAVs.” In serving different aircraft industries, Mejzlik is also working with new materials, one of which is a spread tow fabric; this is a thinner, more durable carbon fibre than others available, and the company anticipates making thinner and either stronger or lighter blades with them. “We’re making a new propeller using the spread tow which weighs under a gram; it’s less drape-able than other fabrics, so for complex shapes it’s challenging to use, and it’s expensive, but the properties of the material make it potentially very valuable in some specialist applications,” Mejzlik Jr added. SightLine Applications has launched its new 4100-OEM video processor, its most powerful solution to date, and one capable of processing and streaming video to 4Kp30 quality. “It has the same interface control document and mostly the same form factor as our previous 4000-OEM product, making it easy for customers to drop-in replace the 4000-OEM without reconfiguring their power or software - the 4100-OEM is just 2 mm taller than its predecessor,” explained Hanni Wehrman. “It integrates a newer more powerful Qualcomm processor with dedicated hardware for AI processing, so we’re planning on doing more AI-powered functions with it, and potentially three simultaneous channels through it, as a lot of customers have been asking about doing that, and it certainly has the processing power for it.” The 4100-OEM can process and stream two video channels simultaneously at 1080p30. It is also designed with four serial ports (though a MIPI-Input adapter can now be connected, which would add three more as well as GPIOs), an I2C interface, and Ethernet. It weighs 29.7 g, measures 50.5 x 38.1 x 16.5 mm, and consumes less than 5 W in normal operations. SightLine has also updated its 1750OEM video processor with a second channel, following customer requests for a version capable of outputting two simultaneous streams. When running both streams at once, they can output video quality to 720p30 (if just one channel is streamed, it can provide 1080p30 video). Both the 4100-OEM and 1750-OEM are engineered for H.264 and H.265 encoding, with three digital video inputs (one MIPI, one USB 3.0 and one parallel digital and camera adapter). Fizoptika Malta has updated its U173D FOG-based IMU with more powerful accelerometers, to give it a higher g-range capability. “It now has a range of 50 g, as opposed to our other products which have a range of 10 g; this improves its capacity in gimbal stabilisation as well as some short-term navigation applications,” said Arthur Tua. The system continues to use the same SWaP-optimised FOGs as before for angular rate, which have a bandwidth of 1 kHz, an input range of 300˚/s and a bias of 1˚/hr. The new accelerometers have a bias stability of 50 µg and a bandwidth of 800 Hz. 113 Uncrewed Systems Technology | June/July 2024 Fizoptika Malta’s U173D FOG-based IMU has been upgraded with a more powerful accelerometer, improving its capacity in gimbal stabilisation and some short-term navigation applications SightLine Applications’ new 4100-OEM is its most powerful video processor to date, capable of processing and streaming video to 4Kp30 quality
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