106 Show report | DroneX support a carbon plate used as ground protection for the tail rotor,” Fabbi added. “For these reasons, good stress resistance was vital and Windform XT 2.0 achieved it, with a good ratio of weight-to-stress resistance.” CRP Technology has also made enclosures for batteries and electronics, printing them using its Windform fibreglass composites to achieve high strength and insulative properties. “We are one of the few companies that can print dielectric casings and enclosures; an expertise we gained by printing components for racing motorbikes and Formula One, where parts must be safe, very lightweight and strong enough to survive high vibrations,” Fabbi said. While CRP Technology has largely specialised in making high-end materials for professional applications (from motorsport to industrial, aerospace and automotive), it also recently introduced nylon-based material as a lower-price alternative to its very high-performance thermoplastics and composites. Antrica exhibited a number of its latest video-encoding and decoding systems, including several board-based, SWaP-optimised products that are suited to UAVs and other lightweight or uncrewed applications. Key among the product range was the ANT-1776ZB, which weighs 22 g and measures 58.4 x 48.3 x 9.3 cm. It is intended to appeal to integrators seeking a SWaP-optimised solution, as well as one suited to multi-sensor operations, having been designed to accept up to three video inputs simultaneously. “The ANT-1776ZB is designed to accept multiple video inputs and integrate with the Sony Zoom Block camera range, and we have recently introduced a lower, competitive price to make this an attractive option for installers,” said Carly Loke from Antrica. In addition to integrating LVDS inputs, the encoder can interface with up to two extra inputs via CVBS, USB Type-C, SPI or CameraLink. Both H.265 and H.264 compression are also available in the ANT-1776ZB. “Low latency is another key feature we’ve targeted with these products: achieving 100 ms of glass-to-glass latency is possible when used with the software decoder that is included with purchases of units in our ANT- 177X range,” Loke added. “In UAV applications, latency is critical, and our products are currently being used in real-world applications for their latency performance.” As well as functioning as a video encoder, the ANT-1776ZB can be used as a miniature network video recorder, a transcoder or an AI learning solution. Antrica also continues to develop new features in the system firmware. Inductive Power Projection (IPP) has developed a wireless, inductive charging solution aimed at transferring power bidirectionally between vehicles and charge stations, which it calls MHz-WPT (wireless power transfer). “We use a much lower-weight coil on the vehicle and, overall, a lower-cost system than has been seen previously in inductive charging solutions, and, partly for that reason, we’re targeting UAVs as our first commercial application of MHzWPT,” said Dr Mike Taylor of IPP. “Conventional WPT technology uses copper coils, which are limited to maybe 85 kHz power-transmission frequencies due to skin effect, and while using increased turns of copper or ferrite cores can increase performance; they add weight and bulk, meaning diminishing returns. By contrast, our patented, metal/dielectric, hybrid-ring resonator technology can be constructed from a variety of materials.” The company started its development using prototypes with copper-plated steel tubes and sintered ceramic dielectrics, and today it has incorporated a dielectric portion to achieve 13.6 MHz power-transmission frequencies, meaning charging rates of up to 2 kW. The design of the MHz-WPT solution is additionally optimised to minimise power transmission to adjacent foreign bodies, lessening or removing the need for foreign object detection near the UAV and charging module. It can also transfer power through water; the transmission rate is currently at kHz frequencies, but the resulting charge rate is still usable for USV, UUV and other marine applications. IPP is also developing a sapphire-based design for future commercialisation, which should be capable of wireless charging rates up to 50 kW. Kindhelm came to the show from Finland to showcase its technologies for sensor-fused navigation capabilities in uncrewed systems. “We started with traditional GNSSIMU systems, and today have integrated them with camera sensors – including compatibility with both stereo and mono cameras in various combinations – with visual positioning and odometry,” said Vesa Hölttä of Kindhelm. For visual odometry, the Finnish company uses an algorithm that tracks features within video data, and references them in relation to the speed and rotation of the camera, measuring the distance travelled with positioning calculations accurate to 0.6%. Its visual positioning works by comparing a photogrammetric map with camera data. “It’s AI, but we don’t need training data from the operating environment or annotating, as other solutions might. The algorithm simply finds features from images and then tracks them,” Hölttä said. December/January 2025 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Antrica’s ANT-1776ZB video encoder and decoder
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