Unmanned Systems Today

Open ROV VR Cockpit             In 201X the OpenROV company released their idea on Kickstarter for a DIY underwater drone to explore the ocean.  In an Interview with the company’s co-founder David Lang he stated “five years ago the team just wanted to explore underwater caves in search of gold, but in the time since then, they’ve shipped 1,600 underwater robot kits to 50 different countries, prototyped and experimented with numerous new designs, and built a community of similarly minded underwater enthusiasts online” (Love, 2015). Their campaign was a huge success and the evolution of the design began to grow in sophistication both in terms of performance, and available data. What makes the platform special is the fact that it is open source, which means its software and development is wholly supported by its community of users. One recent addition to the Open ROV platform is the OpenROV VR Cockpit which displays valuable data to the operator directly to a virtual display on the u

Unmanned systems required a method of transmitting data back and forth from the aircraft to the ground station. While there are multiple methods and protocols used to accomplish this transmission, one of the best examples is MAVLINK. MAVLINK stands for Micro Air Vehicle Link, and is the primary method of transmitting data on of the shelf consumer drones like the Parrot AR drone, as well as many of the do it yourself kits and collegiate robotics programs utilizing the PIXHAWK or Ardupilot flight controllers. The following will describe a commonly purchased DIY autopilot kit, the Arducopter, attached to an F450 style quadcopter frame.               Mavlink was designed in 2009 by Lorenz Myer under LGPL License (Balasubramanian, 2013). Mavlink works by sending encoded messages. These messages are first encoded by the ground control software often called Mission Planner (MP). The encoded messages are sent either via USB serial connection, or through wireless telemetry, both can be used,

Research Assignment: UAS Sensor Placement Preface, This topic is of particular interest to me as I own both of the UAS being discussed in this assignment/blog posting. The DJI Mavic Air, and the Armattan Rooster FPV racing/freestyle Quadcopter. First Person View Drone Racings is gaining rapid popularity thanks to the Drone Racing League being featured on ESPN, local racing events held by Multi GP, and freestyle flying as seen on the popular youtube channel Rotor Riot. The high speed quadcopters are built to be fast and durable typically touting carbon fiber frames, high thrust motors, and advanced flight controllers. The Armattan Rooster is a Racing/Freestyle frame that can be customized by the builder or purchased as a complete drone. My personal Rooster was built using a CLracingF4s Flight controller, and a 4 in 1 Spedix 30 am ESC, 4x TMotor F40 Pro v2s, a TBS unify pro video transmitter, and a TBS crossfire long range low latency receiver. The onboard FPV camera is a Runcam

2.4 - Research Assignment: Unmanned Systems Maritime Search and Rescue (PLG1 ) Unmanned maritime systems offer flexibility and greater capability for search and rescue operations. While there are several maritime surface systems that are developed for this task, such as the ROAZ II, or the U Ranger, one exciting new airborne system is employing new technology for wide area ocean scanning. The Scan eagle has been used by the Navy for over a decade in combat zones for Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes. Sentient, an Australian company specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and computer sensing, has developed a new type of sensor they call ViDAR which they believe will greatly enhance the maritime search and rescue front as well as increase the surveillance capabilities of the aircraft. ViDAR stands for Visual Detection and ranging, similar to RADAR, radio detection and ranging, ViDAR uses the visual bands of the electromagnetic spectrum to send out pul

Consumer drones have rapidly evolved in the last few years. While cameras are almost expected on nearly every drone purchased these days, the capabilities of those cameras are increasing significantly. Though many on-baord cameras offered with high end drones boast the ability to capture ultra high definition (UHD) 4k resolution full motion video, they still only collect the what the human eye can see, color and light. These colors fall within the visual range of the electromagnetic spectrum, and represent what we perceive with the naked eye.  The colors fall between the wavelengths of about 400-700 nanometers. Camera sensors can be tuned to image only certain wavelengths/colors, and there are many applications for looking at various individual bands of this spectrum. There are several reasons one would want to isolate specific bands, or capture wavelengths outside of the visual spectrum.  but one example would be to monitor the health of the vegetation in a farmers field. Multi Spe

While this final weeks post asks specifically about “Unmanned” systems, I am going to include “optionally manned” systems as well, since I believe it will have the greatest future impact on the world. Self-driving cars are slowly working their way into the consumer market, and automotive manufactures are working hard to develop and implement this technology. I say optionally manned, because I don’t believe that humans will ever lose the desire to drive all together. Obviously the intent of the self-driving car is to transport things, including people. If a human is to be on board, I believe it should have the option to drive the vehicle. Companies like Tesla, and Ford are taking this approach. But a self-driving car would also have the advantage of driving its self to the dealership for scheduled maintenance, driving its self to the car wash, or driving its self to the tire shop. While unmanned aerial systems and unmanned maritime systems that are changing the world now, with the way