16 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 Researchers have developed a technique for UAVs to pick up large objects using knotted cables rather than robotic arms, writes Nick Flaherty. The team at Lehigh University in the US is developing algorithms that will allow UAVs to overcome friction and tie a knot in a cable without getting entangled. Traditional aerial systems have centred on robotic arms for autonomous grasping, which are heavy and hard to fly with. Cables benefit from being lightweight and flexible, allowing versatile manipulation. They can also conform to objects of various shapes and sizes, increasing the range of tasks that an aerial robot can perform. Using cables also reduces the overall weight of the system, resulting in a longer flight duration. “The goal would be to get to a point where people don’t have to touch the robot at all,” said David Saldaña, assistant professor of computer science & engineering at Lehigh. “We could just tell the robot to pick up that box of medicine and deliver it. We can’t use traditional reinforcement-learning algorithms for this. We have to make our own because they have to learn fast since robots in the air need to operate fast.” “We have a new concept called a polygonal hitch,” explained Saldaña. “Pairs of robots can make one side of the polygon and are in charge of that side only. The polygon can be scaled up or down, depending on the size of the object you’re moving.” Topology-based planning algorithms will be developed to form the hitches, providing the specific movements required for the UAV. The aim is to create a library of knots to streamline the transportation process, which can be adjusted to requirements. The research is aimed at improving the use of UAVs in applications such as construction, logistics and disaster management. Algorithms Enabling robotic arms to tie knots in cables August/September 2024 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Using knotted cables to lift payloads (Image courtesy of Lehigh University)
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