Found a great blog post…

http://rcaircraft.blogspot.com/2010/03/wwii-uav-flies-again.html

Marilyn Monroes old company

AeroVironment Inc. (AVAV: News ) announced that it received firm fixed-price orders valued at $20.73 million for digital Raven unmanned aircraft systems and digital retrofit kits, and $17.14 million for Raven system spare parts, repairs and training services for the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. The orders were released under the existing U.S. Army joint small UAS program of record for AeroVironment’s Raven.

The Raven unmanned aircraft is a 4.2-pound, backpackable, hand-launched sensor platform that provides day and night, real-time video imagery for “over the hill” and “around the corner” reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition in support of tactical units. U.S. armed forces use Raven systems extensively for missions such as base security, route reconnaissance, mission planning and force protection.

MANASSAS, VA — (Marketwire) — 02/17/10 — Aurora Flight Sciences announced today that
the DA42M aircraft that will serve as its Optionally Piloted Vehicle (OPV)
prototype has arrived at its Manassas, Virginia facility.

The DA42M is a 4-place, twin-engine general aviation aircraft produced by
Diamond Aircraft in Austria. The aircraft that will become the prototype
for Aurora’s OPV was originally used by Diamond as a prototype for the DA42
Multi-Purpose Platform (MPP) development program. Over the past several
months, the aircraft has been upgraded with Austro E300 heavy fuel engines.

Aurora’s DA42M-OPV, named “Centaur”, adds an extensive suite of propriety
electronics and software that retains all of the manned mission capability
while also enabling the capability to conduct missions with no pilot
onboard. This “optionally piloted” configuration is unique to the Aurora
version of the DA42M.

“The Centaur has roughly the same payload and range performance as the MQ-1
Predator UAV,” said Aurora President John Langford, “but it has several
important advantages. First, it can be flown with a pilot onboard, which
will facilitate operation in the National Airspace System. Second, it has
two engines, which gives greater reliability and safety. Third, the
Centaur is easily reconfigurable so it can carry a variety of payloads.
Finally, it has extremely low operating costs. We see it as a crossover
product with enormous potential in many markets.”

Development of the Centaur began in August of 2009. The Preliminary Design
Review was completed last month. Aurora expects to make its first flight
in the summer of 2010 and to begin deliveries in 2011. In its manned
aircraft mode, the Centaur is intended to retain the DA42’s normal-class
FAA certification. When operated in the unmanned mode, it is expected to
fly under an Experimental certification.

The Centaur’s planned first mission is mapping the ice pack over Greenland,
as part of a NASA experiment being proposed by Harvard’s Prof. James G.
Anderson. For this mission, a removable “belly pod” housing the radar will
be installed underneath the aircraft. An optional nose pod allows other
payloads to be installed in the nose.

About Aurora Flight Sciences

Aurora Flight Sciences designs and builds robotic aircraft and other
advanced aerospace vehicles for scientific and military applications.
Aurora is headquartered in Manassas, VA and operates production plants in
Bridgeport, WV and Columbus, MS and a Research and Development Center in
Cambridge, MA. To view recent press releases and more about Aurora please
visit our web site at www.aurora.aero : www.aurora.aero .

The TERP II is a quick deployment and easy to operate micro UAV. It is capable for providing real time information and is ideal for covert & tactical operations as it can pick up and instantly relay information back to base with full security. TERP-II has all the industry leading features incorporated into it including optical zoom, night vision IR capabilities, encrypted data transmission, etc.

DRDO Rolls Out Multi-Purpose Micro Air Vehicles

Indian scientists from Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) are presently developing Micro Air Vehicles (MAV) for varied defence applications such as surveillance and disaster management. These MAVs are made of a unique mix of material and are not easily detectable by radars.

The research and development on the MAVs are promoted by the National Design and Research Forum (NDRF), with support of Aeronautical Research and Development Board (AR&DB), Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and various private groups.

The MAV are like tiny vehicles that work like spies in sky. They weigh only 300 gms and are 300 millimetres long. Since these MAVs are not entirely made of metal and carbon fibres, they are hard to intercept by radars and sensors. These MAVs have a range of two to five kilometers and they fly some 100 to 200 metres above the ground for 30-40 minutes and capture images.

Lt. Gen (Dr) V J Sundaram, key scientist behind the MAV who was the former Director DRDO said that the MAV may be of the order of $16,000 and the sensors alone will take up 30 to 40 per cent of the cost. As of now, the MAV programme has become a national research initiative and a proposal of $19.6 million has been submitted to the Government to approach the project in an integrated manner. While MAVs will come in handy for the Indian Defence Forces, it can also be applied in other areas such as disaster management since they can be easily operated and deployed.

The Indian defence research organisations first supported MAV concepts in 1998. A study of MAVs was initiated in 2002 and a “national perspectives” report was produced in April 2003. A decision to develop MAVs was taken in 2005 and in the same year there was a US-Indian workshop on the technology. A fixed-wing MAV project was proposed in 2006. In 2008, a prototype was produced for fixed, rotor and flapping-wing MAVs and work has been going on to enable technologies including navigation, power supply and launch and recovery.

Interesting Indian MAVs on display at Defence Expo 2010

In a week containing several new offerings this one stood out as the most exciting. Based on an ARM chip and being bought together by a very enthusiastic team the Open Pilot project could be a game changer.

Listen to Angus Peart and David Ankers on the DIYdrones Podcast

Read more here :-

http://openpilot.org/

Forums here

http://forums.openpilot.org/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/15/police-drone-arrest-backfires

For Merseyside police, the “eye in the sky” arrest was a landmark moment in policing history. The force had managed to track down and apprehend a teenager who had fled from a presumed stolen Renault Clio, senior officers revealed, by using a remote-controlled flying robot equipped with thermal imaging cameras.

But the attempt to claim credit for the UK’s first arrest using a surveillance drone backfired tonight after it emerged the force itself could face prosecution because officers flew the surveillance aircraft without permission – a criminal offence.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which regulates UK airspace, confirmed it was investigating Merseyside police over the apparently unauthorised use of its drone to pursue the 16-year-old after he fled from a suspected stolen car in Bootle. It is one of three UK forces using the drones.

Officials from the regulator’s Aviation Regulation Enforcement Department (ARE), which investigates and prosecutes alleged breaches of airspace, are investigating the incident, and Merseyside police has told regulators the drones have been grounded with immediate effect.

The CAA was tipped off by the Guardian after Merseyside police released a statement to the media last week declaring it had broken new ground by making an arrest using its newly acquired Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).

Police used the drone to pursue two suspects in the Clio on 26 January. Officers arrested a 20-year-old at the scene, and used the rotor-propelled drone to track the 16-year-old after he had sprinted off in the dark and hid in some bushes some 100 metres (300ft) away.

“The force is continually looking to use new technology to help in its fight against crime and these arrests demonstrate the value of having something like the UAV as a resource,” Chief Inspector Nick Gunatilleke, from the force’s Antisocial Behaviour Taskforce, which operates the drone, announced on Wednesday.

However, police appear to have overlooked the legislation that came into force this year, following concerns about the safety implications of flying unmanned aircraft in built-up areas.

In a statement tonight, the force said: “The CAA introduced new statutory regulations on 1 January 2010 which requires all UAVs to be licensed by the CAA before use. Since the force has known of the change in regulations all UAV flights have been suspended and will remain so until the appropriate licence has been granted.”

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2010/02/11/merseyside-police-make-uk-s-first-ever-flying-drone-arrest-in-litherland-100252-25810555/

MERSEYSIDE police made the first ever arrest in the UK using a flying drone to catch a suspected car thief in thick fog.

It swooped into action in Litherland to find a suspect who was hiding at night in poor visibility.

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) acts as a flying CCTV and thermal imaging camera.

It was deployed on January 26 when it was reported that two men had stolen a Renault Clio in Bootle.

After a police car chase the suspects bailed out of the Clio.

Officers were able to detain one of the suspects, but struggled to find the second man in the dark.

But using the UAV’s onboard thermal imaging technology, its operator was able to use live images of the suspect’s body-heat to direct patrols to the spot by the canal where he was lying.

The force became the first in the UK to trial the drones in 2007, and since then has used them to assist in search and rescue operations, search warrants and to crack down on anti-social behaviour.

They are operated by the force’s anti-social behaviour task force and directed from the ground by remote control, providing the force with a cheaper alternative to the police helicopter when aerial surveillance is needed.

Flight tests are the cornerstone of UAV research. The tests ensure that hardware and software systems work in concert, bridging the gap between lab development and real-world application. But the cost of performing flights drives most researchers to focus on computer simulations, leaving the issues of implementation to someone else. There was no existing method to test computer code, flight control systems, sensors, and other hardware without actually flying the UAV. To address this issue, the researchers at DASL envisioned the Systems Integrated Sensor Test Rig (SISTR).

SISTR is a hardware-in-the-loop test rig that can be used to characterize and design sensor suites, test control algorithms, and emulate flight tests. The facility is designed to virtually fly the UAV sensors through a realistic environment. Sensor data feeds into a high-fidelity math model of the aircraft, which generates the aerial robot’s motion with a six-degrees-of-freedom gantry. This allows the UAV to be rapidly developed in a controlled, measured setting.

The heart of the rig is a three-degree-of-freedom gantry from Techno Inc. that was custom built to provide the speeds and accelerations needed to simulate UAV flight. The gantry has to have a large envelope of approximately 15 ft wide by 20 ft long by 10 ft tall to enable the UAV to fly completely through the environment. In addition, it needs very fine motion control and high levels of speed and acceleration to simulate UAVs flying through the space.

The remaining three degrees of freedom are provided by a Drexel-made pan/tilt/roll unit attached to the end of the gantry beam. The axes of rotation intersect at the center of the sensor, mimicking how most aircraft rotate at their center. This approach decouples rotations, allowing independent control over each axis.

The environment is represented by a scaled mockup of a near-earth environment. By scaling down the environment, a much larger area can be re-created inside the confined lab space. The environment was created at 1/87 scale so HO railroad accessories can be used to dress up the model.

A nonflying mockup of the UAV equipped with collision-avoidance sensors is attached to the gantry. The sensor data feeds into a high-fidelity math model of the real-world aircraft. The math model is used to control the motion of the gantry. The test rig also has a rain machine, dust machine, fog system, fans, and lamps to reproduce rain, dust, and fog. Twelve 750-watt lamps on the top of the rig are used to simulate day and night conditions.

The gantry is able to duplicate a large portion of the operating range of the UAV. All translational axes can be controlled within ±0.5 cm. This scales up to a resolution of ±0.43 m, well within the ±2 m accuracy of off-the-shelf GPS systems. Sensors are mounted on the gantry and virtually flown through the environment. Real-time data are collected by the same software that will be used in flight. Control commands are fed into a mathematical model of the aircraft, which generates aircraft positions that are used to drive the gantry.

Aircraft were flown in the test rig at unscaled speeds ranging from 1 to 40 m/s. The velocity was gradually varied to determine if there is an upper or lower bound on the boundaries that the test rig could reproduce. When the aircraft was moving at velocities greater than 30 m/s, the motion was erratic because the control was not updating fast enough. When the aircraft was moving slowly at around 1 m/s, it was difficult to overcome static friction. Acceptable results were seen in the range between these extremes, and the best results were obtained in the neighborhood of 5 m/s.

The scaled tests were verified against baseline computer simulations. A standard

UAV mission was selected in which the UAV uses a camera to guide itself to the center of a window while remaining a fixed distance from the building. Results showed that the tests at 1/87 scale were similar to simulations.

Australia has the very successful Outback Challenge, why not create a similar competition.

That was the idea brainstormed recently in Pretoria, South Africa.

I will add a page so that as the idea is fleshed out, no pun intended, the South African DIYdrones chapter can get the word out.

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Sam already has a Facebook group:- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=317286970228&ref=ts