News

22Jun

Aeromapper Talon successfully completes BVLOS mission over 30Km away

Recently, Aeromao's Aeromapper Talon successfully completed an autonomous mission to a target located 30km away. The Talon maintained strong communications and its control link throughout the entire mission. This mission successfully demonstrated the potential for Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations for the Talon. The Aeromapper Talon costs only a fraction compared to systems with similar capabilities.  

Aeromapper Talon Demonstrates BVLOS

The Aeromapper team carried out the mission in the Andes Mountains of South America. The location of the flight was situated at 2,800m above sea level. The flight had a cruise altitude of 250m agl. Fifty percent of the flight traversed a body of water. The Talon traveled a total distance of 60km in its one hour flight. With a flight endurance of 2-hours, the Talon had enough flight time left to travel an additional 30km. However, the operators decided to bring the UAV back due to peaks in excess of 3,500 m above sea level in the flight path. Currently, the team is planning a future mission to demonstrate 50km reach capabilities. Aeromao's Aeromapper 300 also uses the same long range communication system as the Talon. The demand for BVLOS missions continues to grow throughout the industry. Applications for such missions include: power line and pipeline monitoring, roadways survey, surveillance and wildlife control, as well as long linear missions.  

Powerful solution for linear mission challenges

"We receive many requests from clients who need to fly linear missions sometimes to survey thousands of kilometers of pipelines, power lines or roadways," said Mauricio Ortiz of Aeromao. "We ourselves have completed hundreds of kilometers of linear projects, and know very well the challenges of these types of operations." The Aeromapper Talon is proving a solid solution given the specific capabilities demanded for these applications. Aeromapper Talon performs well in all:
  • Ability to operate in difficult terrain and with a mobile GCS with reliable and strong communications.
  • Quick deployment and easy operation: the Aeromapper Talon is flight ready in 15 minutes. It is one of the easiest UAVs to operate.
  • Several cycles of takeoff and landings per day from different locations: here the hand-launch and parachute landing are pretty much a MUST have. A large area survey needs the flexibility of operating from virtually anywhere.
  • Reliable and easy to repair in the field, as well as affordable with interchangeable spare parts.
 

Complete UAV solution, multiple fronts

Additionally, the Aeromapper Talon is also a multi-mission payload complete solution. It is a great choice for various applications, such as agriculture, centimeter accurate surveys, surveillance, and monitoring. Payloads available include:
  • 24 Mp RGB + with Parrot Sequoia simultaneously: complete full surveys at high resolution and get vegetation data in a single flight.
  • 24 Mp RG + Thermal Infrared: Ideal for pipeline or wildlife monitoring.
  • Forward looking day / night payload: An affordable surveillance and observation platform with long range video streaming. All systems are easily swappable.
  • Micasense RedEdge: A swappable payload option with serious agriculture power.
  • GNSS PPK: Eliminates GCPs and achieves up to 3 cm of accuracy for engineering projects. Also available as a swappable payload.
  • Pix4DMapper Aeromao Edition: serious post processing power with the most exhaustive power available. In an affordable bundle package with the complete UAV system.
  • Agisfot Photoscan Pro: Affordable and flexible post processing software to become a post-processing Ninja.
  Shop Aeromao's entire line of affordable UAV solutions at Unmanned Systems Source.
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19Jun

Pollinating Drones: Could Miniature UAVs Save the World from Falling Bee Numbers?

Pollinating DronesPollinating Drones: Could Miniature UAVs save the World from Falling Bee Numbers? A number of scientists and drone developers are considering just that scenario. For several years, scientist around the world have sounded the alarm over falling bee population numbers. Given their importance in the pollination of plants and crops, this is a cause for concern. Scientists speculate that factors such as human activity and climate change have contributed to the steady decrease in pollinators. But now researchers are proposing a radical new concept to tackle the troubling issue; tiny miniature drones as pollinators. Most of the world’s food supply comes from plants that require pollination. So, artificial pollinators may turn out to be an innovative and very important solution to securing it.  

Swarms of tiny Drones to act as Pollinators

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says that over 70% of the crops we rely on for food depend on insect pollination. Other studies have found almost 40% of pollinators like bees and butterflies are at risk of extinction. To compound matters, as recently as last year, a massive chunk of commercial bee populations mysteriously died out. All this adds to concern about plant survival. According to a team of scientists from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Japan this is where drones as pollinators could help. The researchers, given the worrying collapse of global bee numbers, envision a future where drones help pollinate plant flowers. As part of their research the scientists purchased an off the shelf UAV. The drone was outfitted with horsehair brush strips laced with ionic gel to mimic pollination by insects. The goal was to pollinate a species of flowers using the souped up quad-copter as a bee replacement. The scientists soon discovered they could maneuver the hummingbird-sized drone to allow the bristles to gently collect pollen. In this case, the drone successfully pollinated the wild Japanese lilies used in the trial. Thus, raising the prospect of swarms of drones working in fields to fertilize plants and crops i the future.  

Ionic gel

An ionic gel turned out to be the key to the trial's success. The ionic gel is a sticky substance with a long-lasting , lift-and-stick-again quality. Researchers placed the gel on the drone's horsehair's brush strips. Initially, the gel was developed by the research team’s lead chemist Eijiro Miyako for use on electrical components. However, it ended up finding its best-case use on the drone ‘bee’. For eight years, Miyako’s ionic gel had gone unused; the team was surprised at how well it retained its viscosity and resisted degradation. This led to the researchers trialing the gel as their carrier for pollen and leading to the materials’ successful use on the artificial pollination drone.   Hope for Farmers and Environmentalists The findings give hope to scientists and farmers across the world concerned about falling insect numbers and the possibility of crops failing should we fail to arrest the decline. While it may seem impractical to have mechanical devices working as pollinators, the idea is not completely far-fetched. Advances in drone technology mean that it is possible to control a number of UAVs from one interface. In many cases it is possible to control them remotely through an autonomous program. Currently, drones are available in a range of sizes. Advances towards miniature drones is not too far off either. The results of the research could also have potential implications for both robotics as well as agriculture. The research team believes that through a combination of artificial intelligence and GPS data, these artificial pollinators could "learn" pollination paths.  

Most crucial UAV development?

Innovative technology such as drones has always had a profound effect on the way we live and this may prove to be one of the most crucial UAV developments to date with regards to agriculture. It is therefore possible that large swarms of drones deployed in the environment could eventually help to arrest the issues caused by falling bee populations. Whether drones as pollinators are ever used to help secure the world’s food sources remains to be seen, but for worried farmers and environmentalists, it is a positive development.
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08Jun

J8 Atlas XTR: a UGV for defense, disaster relief and rescue operations

ARGO’s Space, Robotics and Defense Division recently announced the release of the ARGO J8 Atlas XTR (Xtreme Terrain Robot). This UGV (Unmanned Ground Vehicle) is designed for defense, disaster relief missions and rescue operations. Today, UGVs are playing an increasingly important role in hazardous and extreme environment operations. ARGO developed the electric 8-wheeled amphibious, all-terrain mobile robot to help protect the lives of soldiers and keep humans out of harm’s way.  

J8 Atlas XTR

The J8 Atlas XTR features a customizable platform that can adapt to any mission-specific payload device or system. Its uses include navigating and monitoring unsafe areas without risking soldiers’ safety. Both the Canadian and U.S. Armed Forces have trialed the J8 Atlas XTR, with positive outcomes. The Atlas J8 XTR traverses difficult terrain in extreme weather conditions. It can carry payloads up to 600 kg (1,320 lbs.) on land and 300 kg (660 lbs.) on water. It is capable of operating in temperatures from -20C to +40C. Also, thanks to its fully electric drive system, it has a near silent noise signature. In addition, the J8 has a built in two speed transmission that results in a top speed in excess of 30km/h and a typical working speed of 0 – 10 km/h. Requiring minimal training and low maintenance, the J8 also features intuitive user-friendly controls. This allows operators to maneuver it via remote tele-operation or line-of-sight radio frequency (RF) with a rugged hand held controller.  

Remote operation functionality

Fully autonomous, the J8 is capable of self-navigating pre-defined missions in both GPS enabled and GPS denied environments. Furthermore, it has obstacle detection and avoidance. The vehicle’s unique ‘Follow Me’ mode allows wireless tethering to a leader and respond to their movements and direction with the mission route saved for autonomous execution. In March, ARGO received a $1 million contract for three ARGO Atlas J8 XTR. They are currently being tested by Defence Research and Development Canada, an agency of National Defence, at the Suffield Research in Alberta. The U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) purchased several vehicles in recent months, testing them at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center (MUTC) in Butlerville, Indiana. The view is to ultimately deploy it in defense operations. “With the ARGO Atlas J8 XTR, militaries and defense contractors have a mission ready, cost-effective solution that can reduce exposure to threats for troops and minimize the manpower required for disaster response and rescue operations,” said Jason Scheib, ARGO Robotics & Defense Sales Manager. “UGVs such as the Atlas J8 have a huge potential within the next generation of defense operations. We look forward to working with customers to develop and deploy solutions that meet their needs.”  

About ARGO

Since 2008, ARGO’s Space, Robotics and Defense Division has developed more than 20 robotic rover platforms designed for the harshest terrains on earth, and in space. The company’s latest generation of J-class robots offers a new level of mobility. Applications include agricultural, industrial, security, and defense markets. Plus, any application where extreme mobility, personnel safety, security, and durability are required. ARGO XTR robots are a proven, affordable platform. Find out more about ARGO's line of UGVs at Unmanned Systems Source.
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05Jun

Minimizing the risk of chip-jammer interference for UAVs

Affordable, high-end drones coupled with easy-to-use mission-planning tools, created the perfect environment for drones to flourish. No longer the preserve of specialists, applications using drones have ventured into survey, inspection and volume analysis. The impact of drones is little short of revolutionary. But, in the air, the stakes are higher. When things go wrong, the consequences are invariably much more serious than for a ground-based application. One of the biggest threats to drone safety is GNSS interference. At the very least, disruptions to satellite signals can degrade position quality. When this occurs it causes fall-backs from high-precision RTK and PPP modes to less-precise modes. In the most extreme cases, interference can result in complete loss of signal tracking and positioning.  

Self interference

Other components installed on a UAV is often a significant source of interference. The restricted space often means that the GNSS antenna is in close proximity to other electrical and electronic systems. Figure 1 shows what happened to the GPS L1-band spectrum when a GoPro camera was installed on a quadcopter close to the GNSS antenna without sufficient shielding. The three peaks are exactly 24 MHz apart. This points to their being harmonics of a 24 MHz signal: the typical frequency for a MMC/SD logging interface. An AsteRx4 receiver, which includes the AIM+ system, was selected for this setup. As well as mitigating the effects of interference, AIM+ includes a spectrum plot to view the RF input from the antenna in both time and frequency domains. At the installation stage, the ability to view the RF spectrum is an invaluable tool for identifying the source of interference. Plus, it helps with determining the effectiveness of measures such as modifying the setup or adding shielding. For the quadcopter installation in this example, the loss of RTK was readily diagnosed. The problem was solved by placing the camera in a shielded case. All this while the quadcopter was still in the workshop.  

External sources of interference

GNSS receivers on-board UAVs can be particularly vulnerable to external sources of interference, be they intentional or not. In the sky, the signals from jammers can propagate over far longer distances than they would on land. In the case of UAV inspections of wind turbines for example, many countries encourage the construction of windmills next to roads. However, this situation increases the chance of interference from in-car chirp jammers. Though illegal, chirp devices are cheap and readily available on the internet. For example, an individual using a chirp jammer can drive around undetected by the GPS trackers on the vehicle. Car thieves can disable GPS anti-theft devices on stolen vehicles with chirp jammers.  

External interference: the effect of a chirp jammer on a UAV flight

Although transmitting with a power of around 10 mW, chirp jammers are powerful enough to knock out GNSS signals in a radius of several hundred meters on land. In the air, unhindered by trees, building or other obstacles, these jamming signals have a far greater reach. Thus, the UAV is much more vulnerable to interference. Figure 2 shows how a 10mW chirp jammer can knock out RTK positioning over more than 1 km in a high-end receiver. Even a low-end consumer-grade L1 receiver, being less accurate and thus less sensitive, loses stand-alone positioning over several hundred meters. With AIM+ activated, the AsteRx4 is able to maintain an RTK fix throughout the simulated flight. It also shows no degradation to its position variance.  

Solving chip-jammer interference on UAV systems

A comprehensive approach puts interference considerations at the forefront of receiver design and incorporates it into every stage of signal processing. In the case of the AsteRx4 and AsteRx-m2, the antenna signal is immediately digitized after analogue filtering and automatically cleansed of interference using multiple adaptive filtering stages. As each interfering signal has its own individual footprint, the ability to visualize the RF signal in both time and frequency domains allows drone users to identify sources of self-jamming and adapt their designs accordingly before the drone gets in the air. When it is in the air, AIM+ is able to mitigate jamming from external sources: a set of configurable notch filters are complemented by an adaptive wide-band filter capable of rejecting more complex types of interference such as that from chirp jammers, frequency-hopping signals from DME/TACAN devices as well as high-powered Inmarsat transmitters.   You can shop Septentrio's line of solutions at Unmanned Systems Source.  
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01Jun

PPK vs. RTK: When do you choose one over the other?

PPK vs. RTKUAS vendors targeting markets from commercial survey to agriculture are fielding systems with real-time kinematic GNSS (RTK) capability. In principle, RTK promises accuracies at the 1-3cm level. The main purpose is to minimize or eliminate the need for ground control points, thereby reducing cost. Altavian uses GNSS receivers upgradeable to RTK operation, but favors another approach for this level of accuracy: post-processed kinematic (PPK). There are a couple of reasons why:
  1. RTK requires a GNSS base station equipped with a transmitter with a reliable link to a fairly dynamic moving platform.
  2. The rover (on the UAS) itself requires a dedicated receiver for the corrections.
These primary reasons carry some further implications for the cost of deployment, especially when considered against PPK.  

PPK vs.RTK

RTK operations not only require a stationary base station, but it must be located at a known control point. Provided the base station is deployed for long enough periods of time, this is not too much of a problem. The base station’s precise location can be determined post-mission if no control points are already present. In this case, a global shift of the aircraft’s trajectory must be done once the position of the base station is determined, taking away some of the benefits of a ‘real-time’ solution. PPK requires a base station as well. But in many cases, at least in the Eastern US, the public CORS network may be dense enough to provide a base station reasonably close to your project. But, it’s likely you will need a base station of your own. This represents slightly less investment in an over-the-air link to the rover. However, it comes with the possibility of loss-of-lock.  

Losing Lock

In both RTK and PPK, when the rover loses lock, a new integer ambiguity resolution procedure must be initiated. The advantage of PPK is that the search can proceed from previous and future data relative to that instant. Additionally, forward and reverse solutions in PPK are optimally combined and give an estimate of a solution’s consistency. RTK solutions cannot use data that has not yet been recorded. If you want to eliminate ground control points and you chose an RTK system, there is no external information for basing accuracy estimates. Finally, it is worth noting that antennas light enough to be mounted on a small UAS are not geodetic-grade and are not likely calibrated for phase-center variation (PCV), let alone the actual location of the phase center. This means that you might get a reported solution accuracy of 2cm, but it could easily be very misleading. With a PPK solution, at least you can see if the forward and reverse solutions agree within certain bounds (and we acknowledge this is a very limited vote of confidence for any kinematic solution, but it’s better than nothing).  

Conclusion

Ultimately, there is no replacement for real ground truth, especially if your data product must be certified to a specific level of accuracy. However, strategies to minimize the requirements on GCPs can vary widely in their effectiveness, depending on your needs. If positional accuracies of a few decimeters are acceptable, real-time L-band corrections through a subscription service such as TerraStar-D are very attractive alternatives that require no base stations at all. You can find and shop Altavian's line of solutions at Unmanned Systems Source.
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30May

Hemisphere introduces the Vector Eclipse H328 a low-power, high-precision, position and heading OEM board

Hemisphere GNSS recently announced the Vector Eclipse H328, the next offering in the company’s line of new and refreshed, low-power, high-precision, positioning and heading OEM boards. The multi-frequency, multi-GNSS H328 is an all signals receiver board. It includes Hemisphere’s new hardware platform and integrates Atlas GNSS Global Correction Service.  

New hardware platform, higher performance

Designed with this new hardware platform, the overall size, weight, and power consumption of the H328 are reduced. It offers true scalability with centimeter-level accuracy in either single-frequency mode or full performance multi-frequency, multi-GNSS, Atlas-capable mode that supports fast RTK initialization times over long distances. The H328 offers fast accuracy heading of better than 0.17° at 0.5m antenna separation and aiding gyroscope and tilt sensors for temporary GNSS outages. The 60mm x 100mm module with 24-pin and 16-pin headers is a drop-in upgrade for existing designs using this industry standard form factor. The technology platform enables simultaneous tracking of all satellite signals including: GPS, GLONASS P-code, BeiDou, Galileo, and QZSS. This simultaneous tracking makes it robust and reliable. The updated power management system efficiently governs the processor, memory, and ASIC making it ideal for multiple integration applications. The H328 offers flexible and reliable connectivity. It supports Serial, USB (On-The-Go with future firmware upgrade), CAN, Ethernet,and SPI for ease-of-use and integration. It also supports optional output rates of up to 50 Hz.  

Vector Eclipse H328 accuracy

Powered by the Athena GNSS engine, the H328 provides centimeter-level RTK. Athena excels in virtually every environment where high-accuracy GNSS receivers are used. Environments include: open-sky environments, under heavy canopy, and in geographic locations experiencing significant scintillation. Together with SureFix, Hemisphere’s advanced processor, the H328 delivers high-fidelity RTK quality information that results in high precision and reliability. Integrated L-band adds support for Atlas GNSS global corrections for meter to sub decimeter-level accuracy while Tracer technology helps maintain position during correction signal outages. The H328 also uses Hemisphere’s aRTK technology, powered by Atlas. This feature allows the H328 to operate with RTK accuracies when RTK corrections fail. If the H328 is Atlas-subscribed, it will continue to operate at the subscribed service level until RTK is restored. The H328 is designed for robotics, autonomous vehicles, antenna pointing, marine survey, machine control, and any application where high-accuracy positioning and heading is required.   You can shop Hemisphere's line of products at Unmanned Systems Source.
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