Feb. 4 saw the news networks alive with sometimes wild reports about UFOs, UAVs and then a balloon. Balloons are used for weather forecasting on a regular basis, launched daily into the stratosphere with payloads gathering wind speed and direction, temperature, humidity, pressure and, of course, position.
Synchronized twice a day at about 900 locations around the world, balloons are released into the stratosphere gathering essential atmospheric data to feed our weather forecasts. Reaching altitudes of 20 miles, these balloons often drift on winds as far as 125 miles from the release point, broadcasting measurements from their onboard sensors.
At first, maybe North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) thought the balloon crossing into Alaska’s airspace was just one of these high-altitude weather prediction vehicles. Aircraft were apparently scrambled, and initially it was decided there was no threat, so the balloon was allowed to continue and enter Alaskan airspace. It was detected and subsequently tracked by both the United States and Canada for some time as it continued to drift on the jet stream over the border into the lower 48. Then, people in and around Billings Montana (home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base) started to send in reports of a very large balloon high overhead — according to one observer with a high-resolution camera, it even seemed to be stationary for 35 minutes.
Apparently, by the time the good folks in Montana were looking up, the Pentagon had decided the balloon was a Chinese surveillance vehicle. To get this detail, one or more U-2 high altitude reconnaissance aircraft had been dispatched to investigate. The collected U-2 information spotted markings of a Chinese manufacturer on the 200-foot-tall balloon. A payload the size of a small passenger jet dangled some 20 feet below the balloon canopy. It had several antennas of various configurations. A huge solar panel was attached — presumably to power its suite of surveillance sensors.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a ground stop for all aircraft traffic at the Billings airport while decisions were made about downing the balloon or allowing it to proceed.
Meanwhile, it may seem obvious that both the United States and China have developed, launched and make use of surveillance satellites. I imagined that a couple of dozen of these space vehicles would be buzzing over not only each other’s landmass, but also surveilling dozens of other countries as they orbit the whole planet.
What I found was a report that China had at least 260 such orbital observation platforms in 2022, and the United States has even more. Isn’t that enough without resorting to lower-tech balloons?
It’s possible that some electronic transmissions are short range and would not be detected by surveillance satellites operating in geosynchronous orbit (22,000 miles out), or even at 300 miles where the International Space Station (ISS) and most surveillance satellites hang out. So, a slow-moving balloon at 20 miles up might be ideal to “sniff” ground transmissions from sensitive military installations, and if you could control the balloon to hover, all the better to pick up radio signals. Could the gathering of transmission data somehow be used to geo-locate the source? It’s something the U.S. military may be working on, too, as it is reportedly also building a fleet of autonomous dirigibles and balloons.
According to press reports, the United States decided not to immediately take down the balloon, even though it subsequently discovered its surveillance capabilities. Not only was there concern over debris falling on populated areas but allowing the balloon to continue its flight over the United States provided an opportunity to observe its behavior and gather useful information. U.S. bases along its path apparently shut down all communications in sequence, as the balloon passed overhead.
The balloon was apparently found to be transmitting – presumably reporting on where it was and what it had detected. But, at some time transmissions ceased, possibly when U.S. Air Force activity was detected nearby.
The take-down off Myrtle Beach
An F-22 flew to almost the same altitude as the balloon and fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile into it, leaving the payload to tumble from 60,000 feet into the shallow (50-foot deep) Atlantic Ocean off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Recovery boats were already on hand to pick up the collapsed canopy, and to begin locating the electronics payload on the seabed. At time of writing, the U.S. recovery effort has yet to inform us on finding the key electronic payload, which would go a long way to confirming the intended mission for the balloon.
Image: Screenshot of CNN news coverage
Strange, but a couple of days later over Canada, F-22s were again in action to take down a “cylindrical object” detected at 40,000 feet — an altitude posing a danger to airline traffic. Little has been released on what this object might have been — could it possibly be a re-entering piece of space debris? Again, debris recovery and analysis is underway, and we patiently wait for a public report about what this was all about.
What have we learned?
Both China and the United States operate huge fleets of surveillance satellites gathering intelligence daily about each other’s capabilities and those of other countries. Both China and United States have also invested in surveillance balloons, but China is the only country to send one over U.S. territory.
There may have been earlier balloon incursions, which are only now being reported. The U.S. response was initially to determine the configuration of the balloon and its payload, then to allow its journey along the jet stream to continue. The United States has said the balloon did not uncover anything already available by other means, but recovery and analysis of the payload would presumably confirm this announcement.
China is not happy about the U.S. takedown of a harmless, stray weather balloon. And what the heck were F-22s shooting at in Canada?
We’ll tell you more when we learn more….
Tony Murfin
GNSS Aerospace
Editor’s Note: Since the initial instance of an unidentified object floating across U.S. airspace — later identified as a Chinese surveillance balloon — three additional unidentified aerial objects were spotted in North American airspace. One was spotted in Alaska, one in northern Canada and one over the Great Lakes region. All three were shot down by U.S. fighter jets out of caution.
The Boeing B-777 or “Triple-7” is a big airplane — at over 200 feet long, with a wingspan of more than 200 feet, it carries more than 300 people. But getting it from one airport to its destination, which could be up to 8,500 nautical miles away, presents a significant navigation challenge. Combined Air Data and Inertial Reference Unit(s) (ADIRU) and three GPS L1 receivers form the certified primary navigation sensor cluster for the B-777-200.
Boeing has been undertaking its ecoDemonstraor program using various models of its aircraft, and in 2019 a B-777-200 was available for a number of technology demonstrations.
Along with the basic objective of testing out new fuel efficient technologies, Collins Aerospace collaborated with Boeing to demo and test their new generation navigation system using dual frequency, multi-constellation GNSS receivers.
Boeing B-777-200 ecoDemonstrator (Photo: Boeing)
The aircraft is normally equipped with buyer selected, certified GPS receivers which also track world-wide Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) signals — not only improving accuracy but also improving (or reducing) the size of integrity bounds of the position solution. Currently, GPS/SBAS L1 is the only signal permitted under current FAA approved MOPS (Minimum Operational Performance Standards) for aircraft use in the US, but new MOPS standards are under development for the use of DFMC. Hence, this demonstration program would significantly aid towards validation of the new MOPS standards.
For the demo program, the Collins Aerospace GLU-2100 Dual-Frequency Multi-Constellation (DFMC) enabled multi-mode receiver (MMR) was used as the primary position source. The three GLU-2100 MMRs fitted were loaded with modified software that enabled the tracking and use of GPS L1/L5 and Galileo E1/E5a for the navigation solution using multi-frequency GNSS antennas.
The navigation mode and position integrity algorithms were also revised so the DFMC navigation outputs could be used as the primary navigation outputs for the Flight Management System and the transponder. The Collins GLU-2100 certified L1 position solution was computed in parallel and used to bound the integrity of the Collins DFMC position solution.
The demo gathered stacks of data on this first use of a DFMC receiver as the primary position source on a civil air transport aircraft. The lessons learned will undoubtable support the effort towards the introduction of dual frequency multi constellation GNSS for regular use in civil aviation.
Meanwhile, in the world of unmanned aircraft, several thing of note were recently reported, including:
Aveum Inc. rolled out its Ravn-X autonomous UAS, which is claimed to be a large, fully autonomous unmanned vehicle which can deliver satellites to low earth orbit.
General Atomics demonstrated its Avenger UAV with autonomous CODE (Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment) capability and completed static load testing of the MQ-9B SkyGuardian wing, part of the regular qualification program for civilian aircraft certification.
Airbus Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) UAV completed another phase of high-altitude flight testing in Arizona.
The Ravn-X is a large UAV which apparently uses regular jet fuel, yet claims to be able to get to low-orbital altitudes. With a 60-foot wingspan, 80-f00t length and up to 55,000-pound take-off weight, this is certainly a large vehicle.
There looks to be a long tubular belly protrusion which could be a rocket motor, or fuel tank, or even a payload bay — absent any explanation of how regular air-breathing engines could reach space, we’ll have to speculate — maybe a new type of engine? Nevertheless, burning jet fuel alone, gaining space access might be difficult. Apparently the US Space Force is a sponsor and future customer, so there should be credibility to these claims.
Ravn-X new-gen space UAV (Photo: Aveum)X-37B U.S. Spaceplane (Photo: U.S. Air Force)
The object is to provide rapid access to space for small payloads with a reusable, autonomous, unmanned vehicle. The current vehicle is apparently 60% re-usable, soon to become up to 95%. And minimizing turn-round time is also a major target, with a claim of 3 hours being possible — quite an achievement. Of course, the U.S. already has the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle spaceplane in operation, with a record 780 day stay in space already under its belt.
During the recent two-hour test flight of the General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) Avenger UAV, equipped with tactical radio/data links and targeting capability, independence between control and mission systems was demonstrated.
The flight also tested a degree of autonomy related to the U.S. Air Force Skyborg (aircraft-UAV teaming) program. The USAF Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) software controlled the flight for over two hours without regular ground operator inputs, and coordinated air-to-air search operations with one actual and 5 simulated aircraft.
GA-ASI Avenger UAS (Photo: GA-ASI)
The Airbus Zephyr High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) successfully completed another series of flight tests in Arizona in the first weeks of November. The UAV has undergone weight reductions and was equipped with revised control software which improved system robustness. The UAV is powered solely by sunlight, operates in the stratosphere and provides persistent services currently provided by satellite.
Zephyr is prepared for flight-test (Photo: Airbus)
Operational flexibility and aircraft maneuverability were demonstrated, particularly during lower altitude flying and during transition into the stratosphere. A new flight planning tool suite was put through its paces and a number of different operational concepts were tested by conducting many flights in quick succession.
These tests again demonstrated Zephyr’s capability for take-off, climb, cruise, the performance of the upgraded flight control system, descent and successful landing. Day and night on-station performance of almost 26 days was previously demonstrated during July 2018 flight tests.
It’s good to see demonstrated progress towards dual frequency GPS/Galileo civil aircraft operations through the Boeing ecoDemonstrator program, along with UAV initiatives in potential space-launch capability, autonomous aircraft-UAV teaming, and advances in the HAPS concept. All this, even with the work managed despite these interminable COVID-19 restrictions.
Just a couple of pieces of drone news this month — who would imagine flying a fixed-wing drone into the plume of a volcano? And some new advances in tethered drone capability.
Global warming/climate change — a collection of words which can sometimes lead to disputes, disagreements and dismay. These words can fill people with enthusiasm for change and in others have them just shaking heads. I saw a video some time ago made by an eminent scientist who claimed that all the efforts made by humans to pollute over the centuries and the efforts being made now to help the atmosphere, were insignificant when all the junk kicked out on a daily basis by volcanoes around the world was taken into account.
Nevertheless, it’s for sure that the climate is changing — by human hand or by nature — some people are still seeking a scientific basis to establish if it can somehow be remedied — a greener approach which could stop or limit our ability to go on polluting the only world we have, or at least some version of curbing what we are doing to make things worse.
So it was exciting for me to see recent reports of an expedition from last year in Papua New Guinea where an international group used drones in an attempt to measure carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide coming out of the active Manam volcano. The objective appeared to be direct sampling of the volcano plume to determine content, not just for measurement alone but perhaps also eventually maybe monitoring changes in gas content to forecast future eruptions.
A series of significant eruptions last took place 2004-2006, and again in 2014, but since then Manam has continued to be explosively active all the way up to the present day. It’s possible to climb almost 6,000 feet to the upper dome, but for more efficient regular monitoring the expedition wanted to demonstrate that a fixed wing drone, operated from a village 2.7 miles away, almost at sea level, would work better. Satellite data on emissions is also available, but apparently no predictions of CO2 content has so far been possible, so land based survey and direct sampling might greatly improve understanding.
Hand launched, with an internal parachute system for recovery, the Titan UAV, which can lift a payload of around 2 pounds to an altitude of 7,500 feet and has a range of more than six miles. For the trip to the volcano, two 4k cameras provided forward and rear views, oversized electric motors were installed to provide more thrust and onboard data capture allowed for subsequent analysis of the vehicle dynamics as well as the gas content of the environment. Live data was also transmitted real-time to the operator and monitoring crew and was also stored for later review. The autopilot on the drone is capable of automatic GPS waypoint navigation and manual flight mode may be engaged by the operator. The drone carries GNSS, barometric altitude, airspeed indication and IMU sensors.
The automatically flown flight path up 5,300 feet to one of the two volcanic outlets on the mountain followed a zig-zag path to a point offset from the smoking caldera, and if the drone failed to then turn and intercept the plume automatically, it was manually maneuvered in level flight into the smoke column. Plume intercept was interpreted as a steep increase in sulphur dioxide concentration, and at the same time there were increases forces on the drone, at times up to 2.5 g, with roll deviations up to 25 degrees and significant uplift. Not unsurprising rock and roll given the energy being released by the volcano.
After each plume intercept the drone then left the area and descended in a spiral to the launch site, being recovered by manual parachute release. Two flights were successful, yielding lots of data for analysis, but there was an upset while in the plume on the third flight and the vehicle was lost, thought to be related to pulsating increases in the velocity of gas released by magma in the crater and what looked like a 7-g increase in forces on the vehicle. The plume was figured to be between 1800 ft and 2,500 feet wide, using the length of time spent in the smoke column and the speed being flown.
The flights were all conducted under Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) conditions as agreed by the local air control agency and significant drone design improvements and flight techniques for subsequent ‘volcano operations’ were recommended. Gas emissions were measured at 3,450 to 4,360 tons/day CO2 and 4,840 to 5,880 tons/day SO2 — so lots of carbon pollution from one of the earth’s most active volcanos, one of around 500 worldwide.
Tethered drones offer advantages for some specific applications such as longer flight times for surveillance. Recent outings by Elistair tethered drone systems have included crowd monitoring and TV coverage for Super Bowl in Atlanta, Ryder Cup golf near Paris France, traffic monitoring in Lyon France, TV coverage for the Alpine World Ski Championships in Sweden, Paris Le Bourget airport approach light monitoring, Trinidad carnival crowd monitoring, Kentucky festival crowd monitoring and communications relay, fire control exercises in Greece, New Year’s crowd monitoring in Vienna and crowd monitoring at Madrid’s soccer stadium.
The Orion 2 tethered drone (Photo: Elistair)
But endurance is a key element for longer term surveillance, so Elistair has come out with Orion 2 which has extended the previous 8-12 hours operations envelop all the way out to 24 hours — and added IP54 dust and water rating, so weather shouldn’t interrupt service.
The tether now extends up to 330 feet so the drone can see out further and it can now also lift a 4.5-pound payload such as a combined ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and telecom platform. While streaming georeferenced electro-optical and infrared video, 4G/5G communications nodes may also be brought online at the same time.
So an insight into what it takes to fly a drone into active volcano emissions to move us further towards understanding climate change, and improvements in tethered drone endurance. Doubt many of would expect a drone to survive the extreme turbulence created by the energy released from a volcano, or would even try to do so, but one group has been successful and found a new way to monitor activity and measure bad stuff being pumped into the atmosphere. And if we can hover a multi-rotor drone in the air for 24 hours at about 300 feet, who knows what new applications will soon come out of it.
A solution for these COVID-19 days, getting to injured people really fast, and potentially even faster first response applications are all new drone applications featured in this month’s UAV summary.
As people welcome back football this fall — although playing in empty stadiums – most people are staying home to watch the game on TV. Even though some sports teams like the MLB Dodgers resorted to cardboard cut-outs of fans, maybe to encourage players, nothing beats having real people stamping and cheering in the stands.
So its not surprising that when the Atlanta Falcons play the Carolina Panthers this month at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium, they are planning on having a limited number of real live fans at the game to cheer on the teams. Even in these pandemic days of social distancing and masks, it would seem that a reduced number of fans might space out well in the huge 71,000 seat capacity stadium.
But the drone angle comes with the clean-up afterwards — 71,000 seats, handrails and partitions take a lot of manual wiping down – so the Atlanta Falcons are bringing on disinfecting drones to do the job, potentially with only 5% of the effort it normally takes.
There are two D1 drones being used in Atlanta supplied by Lucid, each equipped with a 2.5-gallon tank filled with nontoxic disinfecting chemicals. The sanitation solution is distributed by specially designed ‘electrostatic nozzles’ which spray evenly and mist the area as the drone passes over.
Disinfecting drones have been used before in places which include several locations in China, the city of Dubai, and company EagleHawk in New York offers drone sanitizing for stadiums and other large public facilities. If this approach works we’ll probably see it in many more stadiums in an effort to safely bring back the fans.
Not sure how this next item fits into the unmanned category for this month’s article — because its certainly manned. But what the heck, its certainly interesting and worth a whirl.
Jet packs have been around for a while, but the U.K. company Gravity has come up with a configuration that appears to be reliable and works well. They recently pitched their system for search and rescue in the Lake District — a mountainous area in the North West of England which is extremely popular for hiking, walking and climbing. So visitors will sometimes get hurt falling off a ledge or a high path on the side of a mountain, or just tripping while walking and injuring an ankle, leg or knee. The rocky hilltops, mountains and many lakes of the Lake District attract around 15 million visitors each year, so there is plenty of opportunity for injuries.
With five miniature jet engines and carrying around 35 liters of jet fuel, the Gravity system range/endurance isn’t that great, but boy is it quick if you want to run up the side of a mountain to find an injured hiker. So more rapid response rather than search — provided you already know where the person is located.
The system is powered by a double jet-engine held at the end of each arm and a single engine with equivalent thrust housed in the actual backpack. Altogether, over a 1000 horse power, which is apparently enough to pick a person up and keep them suspended at around 10 feet off the ground. Guess you would need quite some strength to hold onto the arm units, supporting one-third of your weight on each arm, but apparently you get some level of stability assistance from a flight control system in the backpack.
A recent demonstration test in the Lake District with the Great North Air Ambulance Service certainly showed off the suit’s capability to go from the foot of a mountain up to near the crest of the hill in no time flat. Then a regular air-rescue helicopter was immediately called in to take the victim to hospital. However, the current system apparently costs somewhere around $400,000, so its doubtful it will show up for anything but special appearances and demos until there has been significant engineering cost reduction.
The “Recruit” hi-speed drone is aimed at rapid first response users (Photo: Sonin)
Sonin Hybrid has taken another angle to building a drone by developing a hybrid gas powered propulsion system which charges the vehicle’s batteries while in flight, uses a lightweight carbon-fiber frame with folding landing-legs, and is able to fly at up to 140 mph when pressed to do so. Nominal cruise flight is at 60mph, and flight endurance is claimed to be up to 3 hours – over 5 times that of similar competitor drones.
The Recruit’s options include a stabilized 4k camera, a night vision/IR camera, 30x optical/12x digital zoom camera, a 6k lumen spotlight and a loudspeaker/siren.
With several trials currently underway with first responders, Sonin is eager to establish the requirements for police, fire and military applications. Let’s hope that the trials all involve getting eyes on a location as quickly as possible so hi-speed drone capabilities are needed. Otherwise all the drone racers will probably scoop up these 140mph puppies.
So to enable people to perhaps return to watching sports in person during the ongoing pandemic we have drones pumping disinfecting spray all over sports stadiums which can potentially save huge amounts of manual cleaning effort, provided they can adequately sanitize the target areas — specialized spray nozzles help. Then we have a jet-pack system which was demonstrated getting to injured people as quickly as possible to administer immediate care, followed up by helicopter air rescue. And finally if you want a hi-speed, lightweight drone with good payload capability, Sonin has launched the 140mph Recruit aimed at first responders who need a very quick first response.
These are all completely different applications, all with completely different solutions.
GPS had been around for about five years before first launch in February 1978 and Full Operational Capability (FOC) was eventually declared in April 1995. It takes time to develop, field and prove something as complex as the world’s first satellite navigation system. But we’re now well into a third generation of the venerable GPS, with GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou and IRNSS/NavIC and QZSS around the world and in geographic locales. So, putting aside Transit or anything else, this would make GPS about 47 years old — heading into middle age.
Therefore, it would seem that Glen Gibbons waited until “this GPS thingy” looked like it might actually work — circa 1990 — to launch GPS World, since the magazine is now 30 years old and is also into its third-generation of editor-custodians! Alan Cameron bravely carried the flag after Glen and nurtured the magazine for a good number of years and brought me into the fold as a contributor. We shared ION GNSS conventions and GPS World Leadership dinners and he was able to cajole monthly articles out of me for many years. Now Marty Whitford has his hand firmly on the tiller as publisher, with Tracy Cozzens as senior editor.
So what went down during these decades of technological advancement and for many of the people in the satnav industry? It would be impossible to answer within my word-limit, so I’ll take on an extremely small subset and recount a few things I can still remember.
µGPS. I got into GPS around 1990 in an OEM board-level product spin-off program from a certified GPS airborne receiver at CMC in Montreal — we initally called that L1 receiver µGPS because then it was a small GPS board. Later it became known as the AllStar receiver. We found pretty neat applications for the early ’90s — golf-course systems, vehicle tracking, airport vehicle tracking, the start of vehicle nav systems and such.
At NovAtel in Calgary in the early ’90s, we watched things develop through L1/L2 dual frequency, began RTK market applications in survey, geographic information systems (GIS), agriculture, mining and all multitudes of attempts to get new companies off the ground.
WAAS. Eventually the U.S. Wide-Area Augmentation System (WAAS) program came and swallowed us up through three different prime contractors. Once that Federal Aviation Administration program was running well, we were into programs in Europe, Japan, India and China, and that led into Galileo ground reference receivers. The software qualification work we did on Galileo positioned us to take on mil-spec receiver work, and even anti-jam products.
Then CMC bought NovAtel, and we also joined with CMC to develop a certified airborne receiver. In 2003, NovAtel bought the AllStar OEM product line from CMC — funny how things work out! The joint certified receiver program eventually resulted in a new generation of high-accuracy airborne sensors. We again changed hands in 2007 when Hexagon bought us, and then NovAtel began working closely with Hexagon subsidiary Leica on survey applications. Many new and interesting developments are still going on there.
Nowadays, my interests lie with assisted GNSS and with Rx Networks in Vancouver, which I support and advise. Assisted GNSS comes in many forms, has many avenues in the marketplace, and presents its own unique challenges.
As GPS has evolved into GNSS and into so many, many applications, companies have come and gone but the core of people who drive the industry has grown and acquired new and specialized skills, developing ever more capable technology and products. Even after 47 years of the industry and 30 years of GPS World, we aren’t anywhere close to done.
A drone-versus-piloted attack aircraft, deliveries of medical supplies in North Carolina, unmanned meal deliveries in India and anti-drone protection for the Kennedy Space Complex are just a small sample of unmanned air vehicle news this month.
Even the U.K. BBC TV network picked up the news over the weekend that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) plans to pit an unmanned drone against a manned fighter aircraft, maybe even as early as July next year. The candidate fighter drone is thought to come from the USAF’s “Skyborg” research program — a wide ranging initiative aimed at incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into unmanned vehicles which can out-think and out-fight the opposition.
The logic seems to be that if you could somehow ‘can’ all the experience of today’s pilots – somehow distill all their knowledge and stuff it into electronic memory and have AI use this data-base – then an unmanned fighter drone would somehow do better in combat against a hostile, manned aircraft. Probably a good idea, but how could it be made to work?
The Loyal Wingman in its first test flight. (Photo: U.S. Air Force 88th Air Wing Public Affairs)
And the prime candidate to try all this is out could be the “Loyal Wingman” which was recently rolled out by its manufacturer Kratos. With a target price-tag of only $2 million each (for qty 100), USAF apparently foresees a future with lots of these “disposable’”guys accompanying the manned F-18, F-35, F-22 and future fighters into battle. Perhaps the airborne pilot could even coach his unmanned colleagues through an upcoming dogfight, augmenting the onboard knowledge carried by the drone? Seriously Si-Fi sounding stuff, but its apparently already well on its way.
And would current day autonomous drone operations count as using AI? Well such a drone uses a GNSS nav system and an operator pre-programs a route prior to launch, which the drone then refers to when airborne — even dropping off a package on cue when it arrives at destination, and turning round to fly the same route back home. So referring to an on-board waypoint data-base and executing a beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight on its own — its somewhat limited AI, but the drone is independently doing a task once instructed.
Which brings us to the recent pandemic-related operations that operator Zipline has just begun running out of Kannapolis, North Carolina – from a vacant lot near a Novant Health logistics center — to the Huntersville Medical Center. With only regular capability to operate in accordance with Part 107 regulations, Zipline applied for a waiver to not only fly around population centers, but also to fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) granted emergency authorization for Zipline to support Novant’s hospital and clinic COVID-19 response.
Fortunately, Zipline is coming off over four years of proven medical drone delivery operations in Rwanda and Ghana, so they have very credible capability to perform similar deliveries in North Caroline. Its possible that FAA took this excellent operational record into account in granting this Zipline waiver.
Nevertheless, Novant and Zipline plan to continue with their efforts to gain full FAA Part 135 authorization to regularly operate this medical package delivery service to Hospitals and Clinics in North Carolina. Meanwhile, this first of a kind long-range BVLOS service in the U.S. will continue to gather more airborne miles each day and demonstrate good confidence in safety and reliability. With over 1.8 million miles already flown during their African medical delivery service, Zipline is apparently coming from an established baseline capability.
In India — a country which has been testing drone services for the express deliveries of food to people’s homes — looks like they are ready to see if drones can be given the OK to operate all the time. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has authorized a consortium of 13 companies to test drones flying BVLOS over longer distances to complete deliveries. DGCA apparently may have also been motivated to speed up shipments during the COVID-19 pandemic and SpiceXpress, one of the consortium members, will initially focus on delivering medical emergency/essential supplies after the trials are complete.
But overall, the objective for most consortium members is to get approval for meal deliveries by drone to become common practice in India. This will depend on the reports which the trial participants are required to submit to Airport Authority of India by September 30, 2020 from at least 100 hours of flight operations — hopefully without any serious incidents.
Not sure if everyone watched the SpaceX/NASA Demo-2 launch of the manned Dragon capsule on May 30, but I was glued to the NASA TV broadcast throughout. A truly significant event with not only a manned launch to the ISS by a commercial company, but a launch from Kennedy Space Center pad 39A — the first in nine years from U.S. soil.
Turns out we managed to get a ‘drone’ angle into the launch — or actually an absence of pesky drone interlopers at the launch site. Kennedy has been operating an anti-drone system for several previous launches — detecting and alerting any drone activity within the restricted airspace volume around pads 39A &B.
A mobile, all-weather Moog “Gauntlet” detection/alert system has been deployed for some time at Kennedy, watching for anything drone like within the confines of the launch area. The system is apparently visual, records evidence and provides alert indications over a secure VPN network, presumably to launch control and Kennedy security.
So this month we have news of a potential UAV-manned aircraft showdown, long-range drone deliveries of medical supplies in the U.S., Indian delivery drone qualification, and a drone detection system in use to protect the recent SpaceX crewed launch to the ISS. There is a lot going on, with high levels of complexity and good news in the fight against the pandemic for at least one hospital group in North Carolina.
General Atomics MQ-9 Predator. (Photo: General Atomics)
There has been a lot of scene stealing by General Atomics recently with Predators flying hither and thither, new orders for the Boeing-Navy unmanned re-fueling drones and a UAV flying on Mars — this month’s unmanned aircraft summaries.
The Predator is the archetypical unmanned aircraft which most people might visualize as a “drone” as a result of numerous news reports and photos. Its what we might refer to a “Large UAV” with a 65-ft. wingspan, a 35 ft.-long fuselage and weighing in at around ~10,500 pounds fully fueled.
The SkyGuardian. (Photo: General Atomics)
In fact it’s bigger than a small manned aircraft, like the single engine Cessna 182 which checks in at 36ft wingspan/29ft fuselage. So its clear that something this big and without an on-board driver has to watch where its going, especially when flying within in the US National Airspace System (NAS).
So it was no small feat when General Atomics recently flew a new MQ-9 Predator on a delivery flight from its flight ops center in Palmdale, California, to the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. There was significant coordination by the flight teams in both locations, and with the approval by the FAA. Delivering a new Predator by air saves the Air Force significant manpower, as normally new ones arrive in a crate and require effort to re-assemble.
It’s a sign of progress towards achieving approval to allow regular flights of such large UAVs in the NAS. Nowadays a Cessna 182 pilot can file a flight plan and then basically fly anywhere in unrestricted airspace. Hopefully one day — as a consequence of following rigorous certification verification and FAA approval – pilots of such Large UAS will be authorized to operate in a similar fashion.
General Atomics is working with the U.K. Royal Air Force (RAF) to develop and certify the all-weather, long-endurance SkyGuardian MQ-9B variant to meet NATO-standard Type-Certification requirements, which will then enable the UAV to be flown in civil airspace. The Australian Defence Force (ADF) has also selected this UAV variant for its unmanned applications in and around Australia. In late March, General Atomics flew the first production representative SkyGuardian – known to the RAF as the ‘Protector’ – out of its flight ops facility in El Mirage, California.
Staying with the military theme, Boeing has been working with the US Navy to develop a UAV that can land on aircraft carriers, and following a concept change by the Navy, won a contract to provide tanker UAVs. Tanker UAVs will fill up with aircraft gas on an aircraft carrier or land base, then take off and fly to rendezvous with fighter aircraft to transfer fuel and extend fighter endurance and range.
Right now tanker aircraft are usually quite large aircraft – like the Boeing KC-46A tanker which is based on the Boeing B-767 civil transport aircraft which many of you may have flown on as passengers.
The MQ-25 is still in its initial phases, with four test UAVs slated to undertake the initial flight test program. The first test vehicle has already begun exploring the UAV flight envelope and has 30 flight-test hours under its belt. The Navy has just shown confidence in the program by ordering another three aircraft, bringing the total initial build to seven vehicles.
Its easy to see that UAVs are showing themselves to be extremely useful to military forces, but it might be difficult to understand how a UAV might find itself in the U.S. space program. The “Mars Helicopter” has just been mated to the underside of the next Mars Rover — now called “Perseverance” — both are slated to leave on their eight month journey to Mars in July this year.
Mars UAV being mater with Perseverance. (Photo: NASA)
With two ~4ft rotors which spin in opposite directions, the UAV will have to wait patiently for up to 90 Martian Days after Perseverance touches down in February 2021 until it gets a chance to prove that it can fly in the thin Mars atmosphere — chamber tests here on Earth in simulated Mars air have already shown that flight should be feasible.
Built to withstand high g launch and vibration forces and those of the Mars landing, the UAV carries a high resolution camera which is used for navigation, landing and survey of Mars’ surface. Its also designed to withstand the extreme temperatures and high radiation environment on the surface of Mars. The UAV is equipped with a dual-processor flight controller linked to sensors which include a gyroscope, an altimeter, visual odometer, hazard detectors and a ‘visual inertial nav system’ developed by JPL. Although the Mars Helicopter operates autonomously, it communicates with and receives control inputs from the lander, so controllers on Earth load up the flight plan ahead of time into the lander, and then wait for the helicopter UAV to execute the commands. Don’t expect vast coverage of huge panoramas of Mars – its flights are each intended to be more of an extensive hop lasting around 90 seconds at 10-15 ft above the terrain.
Mars Helicopter on simulated Mars surface. (Photo: NASA)
With a body no larger than a softball and weighing less than 4 pounds, the Mars Helicopter is an experiment to see if its possible to fly in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere. With less than 1% the density of our sea-level atmosphere, its necessary to spin the rotors at 2,800 rpm, ten times faster than on Earth. The UAV collects power from its own small solar panel and needs several days to recharge after each flight — of which five are planned. The main objective if flight is possible is to pre-survey interesting potential routes for the lander.
So preparations for large UAVs to regularly fly in civilian airspace, a new approach for Navy refueling systems, and a helicopter UAV destined to fly on Mars next year — completely different unmanned applications, all making progress.
With Coronavirus all over the news, it’s actually encouraging to hear that China is making high-level efforts to contain the infection: two isolation hospitals built in just one week in Wuhan where the outbreak began, travel restrictions inside China, very few people being allowed to leave the country, enforced mask-wearing, and local communities in neighboring provinces blocking visits by outsiders.
Two drone-related stories caught my attention, both in China and connected to the virus outbreak — one where drones were being used to enforce “wear-a-mask (see video), and another where disinfectant was being dispensed by drones.
Photo: Xag
It’s not exactly clear who was behind recent drone flights that broadcast live warnings to people without protective masks on the streets — some villages in rural China were apparently overflown and people were advised to wear a mask while outdoors.
Around Beijing, similar activities were maybe down to well-intentioned social media people and traffic police.
XAG, which has fielded 42,000 agricultural spraying drones in China, is urging authorities to use its drones for widespread disinfectant spraying, and has set up a significant fund to support these activities. The company claims its drones can disinfect a local community in less than four hours, and may already have done so.
Medical transport drones. Staying with the medical theme, Aquiline Drones (AD) in Cincinnati is a drone company operating under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, and is working on a system to transport human organs for transplants.
VyrtX is an organ transport company in Ohio that has teamed with AD, with the object of creating a highway-in-the-sky across the state to overcome ground delivery delays. Apparently around 25% of precious transplant organs don’t make it in time to be used; they are lost to the patients on lengthy wait lists — and many people are dying as a consequence. There are supposedly enough donors, but organs deteriorate during ground transport and desperate transplant candidates are losing out badly.
So the next step for VyrtX and AD are custom-designed drones for life-saving rapid transport between donor and transplant hospitals. VyrtX is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, the Ohio UAS Centers and four Ohio organ procurement organizations to develop the air corridor and begin rapid organ transport by drone across the state.
The University of California, San Diego, Health (UC San Diego Health) is joining an increasing number of health organizations in developing a drone system for blood and documentation transport between its facilities. Collaborating with the UPS Flight Forward drone delivery program and with Matternet, medical payloads will travel between Moores Cancer Center and Jacobs Medical Center. The Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, about 1.5 miles north, will be added provided initial test flights work out well.
Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
UPS Flight Forward is another company that was granted (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier authorization and is already operating a UAS delivery program at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C.. UPS Flight Forward is also planning with CVS to deliver prescriptions and other products to CVS pharmacy customers.
Another drone medical supplies delivery system in Tanzania ran an operational trial in the fall of 2018. Wingcopter (a German drone manufacturer), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and DHL flew medicines from the mainland to an island. The DHL Parcelcopter completed a 60-km route autonomously in around 40 minutes, for a total of 2,200 km flown during the pilot project.
Building on these earlier trials, Wingcopter is now working with Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science to demonstrate a drone delivery system between two Merck facilities in Germany. The object is to show the benefits of direct drone airborne transport over trucks for moving small packages between a Merck lab in Gernsheim to its headquarters in Darmstadt.
The first flight was recently accomplished over roughly 15.5 miles between the facilities, carrying a sample of pigments.
Photo: Wingcopter
The BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flight passed over a dense metropolitan area, power lines, railways, and roadways. Benefits include time savings of around an hour, provided much greater savings at some times, and avoided significant ground vehicle emissions.
To sum up, drones being used to help combat coronavirus, to reduce time and costs for the transport of medical samples and supplies over medium distances, and there’s a spin-off with potential commercial promise, too. It’s a good month for the drone industry…
UAVs are finding places in the lives of more people than ever — farmers employing crop-spraying drones to counter a locust infestation in Pakistan, finding the way towards useful inspection tasks at an operating airport in the U.K., large airborne vehicles providing joy-rides around the U.S., and unfortunately showing up where they are not wanted so security staff have to use protection systems to deal with them.
Crop Spraying
New unmanned air vehicle (UAV) applications keep appearing. Once they do, they start to spread locally and even around the world. Crop management using UAVs has significantly progressed.
The U.S. has used crop spraying to improve crop yield for many years, defending against insect infestation and plant diseases. GNSS guidance systems for crop-spraying aircraft was an early satnav equipment application that eventually became a standard for any fliers contacted by farmers to apply pesticides to protect their crops. Then companies began offering turn-key spraying, which was highly efficient and effective.
UAVs are now entering this segment — they are capable of carrying higher capacity tanks, and autonomous/semi-autonomous navigation enables spraying with minimum supervision. This option is becoming more readily available to the farmer and costs less than using manned aircraft.
Both Japan and China have used UAVs extensively for crop spraying; other countries turning to the solution are Africa, the U.S. and India. In China, more than a hundred different types of UAV are in use in agricultural applications.
Farms around the mega-city of Karachi, Pakistan, have been infested by locusts, but the local government is short of the helicopters and ground applicators normally used for spraying pesticides. A recent graduate returning from his doctoral course in China brought with him knowledge of unmanned vehicle use in agriculture, and is urging rapid local adoption of UAV technologies to combat the locust infestation.
Pakistani agriculture expert Shahzad Nahiyoon claims that UAVs are better suited to crop protection for small farms within difficult contours of the surrounding region. They are less expensive to operate than manned fixed-wing and rotary aircraft, may be operated locally from outside spray contamination zones, and can spray in confined areas. Equipped with a 20-liter tank, spraying one or two 20-meter-wide swaths, 6 to 10 hectares per hour can be treated.
Drones at the airport
Growing a little weary of drone incidents around airports, I was pleased to see a report I had overlooked from a year ago which indicated that trials at Manchester airport in UK had demonstrated airport and drone compatibility. This basically happened because an Air Traffic Control (ATC) system for unmanned aircraft or Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) was shown to keep drones flying around the airport under full control while integrated with regular airport and drone operations.
The trial — referred to as Operation Zenith — sponsored by the National Air Traffic Systems (NATS), made us of the GuardianUTM airspace management system, supplied by Altitude Angel, as the control system for eight trial drone missions at the airport. The drone UTM system was connected to the real-time Air Traffic Management (ATM) system which manages ground and air traffic at the airport, to ensure the control and safe separation of drones and aircraft. The UTM system also provided controllers with a real-time view of all operating drones.
The trial demonstrated the efficient regulation of drone traffic within and around the extremely sensitive airport region. Everyone engaged in the trial made use of real-time electronic map displays driven by the UTM system, showing everything flying in and around the airport; aircraft and drones. Drone pilots used this information to ensure their operations remained safe while operating so close to commercial aircraft in the air and on the ground.
NATS has now formed a strategic partnership with Altitude Angel to deliver this integrated UTM system at airports in the United Kingdom. The UTM system has successfully completed initial pilot trial and evaluation and now NATS intends to further demonstrate UAV management control at six U.K. airports later this year.
Thousands sign for ride with Lift Aircraft
Hexa in flight (Photo: Lift)
Lift Aircraft unveiled its 18-rotor Hexa unmanned/manned aircraft more than a year ago — what’s new now is that 13,000 people have signed up to take one for a ride.
The large drone weighs in at 432 pounds and can fly for 10-15 minutes with a single passenger.
The Hexa is controlled by a single joystick, and an onboard iPad provides route guidance and manages take-off and landing. Classed as a powered ultralight air vehicle, it can be flown without a pilot’s license, so Lift announced that it will offer Hexa flights to anyone wanting to fly (in 25 selected U.S. cities) provided they physically fit into it and weigh less than 250 pounds.
Lift intends to map each recreational flight area in 3D, and plug this map into the vehicle control system. The 13,000 people who signed up can expect to pay $125-250 for each joy ride. Lift has yet to announce the first location where the fun rides will take place.
Counter-UAS system downs drones in Philippines
The Southeast Asian Games were recently held in the Philippines with thousands of participants from eleven countries of Southeast Asia — the event was spread across 23 cities around the country. However, a number of uninvited drones showed up during the opening ceremonies on November 30th to take a look, but fortunately all were quickly dispatched.
The DroneShield counter-UAS system had been deployed in advance for protection of the event, and the local security forces used the system to detect and disable the invaders. According to the company, security personnel found the drones using body worn RF detection devices, and the Dronegun was then used to disable them.
Jamming the control link and GNSS L1 and L2 frequencies, UAVs are generally stopped in mid-flight when illuminated by the rifle-like device. DroneNode jammer in a suitcase was also used to provide blanket protection over a 1km circular area when the alarm was raised.
In all, seven unauthorized drones were disabled, some of which were apparently flying near the intended flight path of the helicopter bringing President Rodrigo Duterte to the opening ceremony.
Summary
It might seem a little ridiculous that we’ve had to come up with systems to counter uninvited or malicious drones (C-UAS). Making provisions for protection is probably something most sensitive facilities will have to do. Its possible that governments may already be investing in such technology to protect many facilities. More drones available for useful, productive and even recreational applications means some can end up in the wrong hands.
Nevertheless, good stuff comes out of drone applications, and the benefits seem to by far outweigh the need to protect ourselves against bad actors.
A lot has happened in the world of unmanned aircraft over the last several weeks, and this month we’ve captured a cross-section of news that illustrates the variety of applications and goings-on across the industry. These include:
drone delivery to a nuclear submarine,
Uber Eats launching a new delivery drone,
a new heavy-lift UAV,
Chinese DJI drone use banned by the U.S. interior department,
the Grand Sky facility in North Dakota demonstrating control of a NASA Global Hawk over California,
runway inspection using drones at an airport in Canada, and
a drone-of-sorts completing 780 days in orbit.
Package delivery to USS Hawaii (Photo: U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael B. Zingaro)
Submarine delivery. The University of Hawaii and the U.S. Navy recently tested out a new way to supply an operational nuclear sub with a few essential items while the Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Hawaii was off the West coast of Oahu. A five-pound package of circuit cards, medical supplies and food too – which someone surely must have snuck in — was delivered using a Skyfront Perimeter gas-powered hybrid drone. The UAV has five-hour endurance, easily flying just one mile out to sea and back to complete the test delivery on Oct 10.
The package was lowered on a cable from the Perimeter drone and captured by a ‘snag’ pole extended off the sail of the submarine. This timely small package delivery to an underway sub has apparently led to the creation of the submarine force’s first UAV squadron in the Pacific, according to the Navy.
Uber Eats. Uber Eats has been testing food deliveries from McDonald’s near San Diego State University, and has just announced a new 6-rotor vertical take-off delivery drone it plans to use for more test deliveries next year in San Diego.
Uber Elevate delivery drone (Photo: Uber)
The ideal delivery profile for this drone is a meal for two picked up from a restaurant six miles away from dispatch in eight minutes, another six miles to make the delivery and then six miles to return to base — maybe less than 20-30 minutes all told. However, they have an intermediate drop-off to a ground-based delivery driver who then travels to the customer’s door to actually deliver the food. This process contrasts with Amazon’s approach — they are planning to lower packages on a cable directly to the customer – but food delivery might actually need a guy in a truck knocking on your door with hot food.
Heavy-lift drone. The Heavy-Lift VoloDrone, manufactured by Volocopter in Germany, flew for the first time in October. Targeted at the logistics sector, its anticipated that the large UAV may also find applications in agriculture, and other operations where a large – up to 440 pounds – payload is required. Velocopter has so far focused on unmanned air-taxi transports, but the larger scale involved in people transport appears to have spun off into a heavy-lift derivative UAV.
Christoph Hommet, chief engineer, with the heavy-lift VoloDrone. (Photo: Volocopter)
The VoloDrone is a powerful, fully electric, heavy-lift utility drone which is anticipated to have a range of up to 25 miles carrying a 440-pound payload. The rotor area has a diameter of 30 feet and the vehicle is 7.5 feet high. It can be remotely piloted or can fly autonomously on pre-set routes.
Loads can be carried between the legs of the landing gear on standard rack mounts or slung below, or a tank and sprayer could be fitted for agricultural applications. The 18 rotor multicopter platform uses swappable lithium-ion batteries and an in-house flight control system, and benefits from existing development and test of the air-taxi Velocopter.
Anywhere ground transportation or construction operations are challenged by difficult access, the VoloDrone might assist by providing an airborne option. It is designed as a universal air-lift vehicle which may be adapted to different use cases by the addition of special-purpose accessories.
Examples of VoloDrone load configurations. (Photo: Volocopter)
DJI drones barred. The U.S .Interior Dept. (DoI) has barred the use of DJI dones, except for emergency purposes. With a combined department fleet of over 800 drones, around 15% are supplied by Chinese manufacturer DJI.
Amid the on-going trade war between China and the U.S., members of Congress have grown increasingly concerned about American use of Chinese technology – whether DJI drones, or Huawei networking equipment. Recently Congress has proposed the American Drone Security Act to limit Government agencies’ use of Chinese equipment.
In anticipation of this issue DoI has already been working with DJI for over 15 months to identify possible security gaps in drone design, and DJI has come up with a “Government Edition” software load which ensures data is only gathered and stored on-board the drone and is isolated and downloaded for only DoI use after each flight — data transmission has been eliminated as a possible source of data leakage. DJI even volunteered to partial manufacture in the US. Therefore, DoI had previously resisted Congressional pressure to discontinue use of its fleet of DJI drones.
Nevertheless, DoI Secretary Bernhardt has ordered that Chinese drone use be now discontinued until an internal review is completed. In the meantime, DJI drones may only be operated by DoI for emergency purposes, “such as fighting wildfires, search and rescue, and dealing with natural disasters that may threaten life or property.”
NASA Global Hawk UAV (Photo: NASA/Tom Miller)
Large BVLOS drones. The Grand Sky Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) facility in North Dakota has become an operational base for large UAVs, including the General Atomics’ Predator and Northrup Grumman’s (NG) Global Hawk. The Grand Sky facility is immediately adjacent to Grand Forks Air Force Base, where the RQ-4 Global Hawk high altitude, long endurance autonomous aircraft is based.
In order to offer full operational capability to its intended customer base at Grand Sky, Northrup Grumman is building a hangar and has also established a Transportable Operations Center (TOC) in its Grand Sky Mission Control Center. It was through this TOC on October 10th that NG was able to take control of an in flight Global Hawk mission in California.
A NASA crew in California had managed the take off and flight of their Global Hawk from the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) on Oct. 10, 2019. During the mission, the flight team at Grand Sky took over control of the aircraft and executed a series of flight maneuvers to demonstrate the operational capability of the TOC. This capability is key for the Grand Sky facility to become fully operational.
A Microdrone md4-1000 used in the surveys at EIA. (credit: EIA)
Runway inspection. Drones are never allowed to operate anywhere near an active airport, so it’s something of a switch to learn that the Edmonton International Airport (EIA) in Alberta, Canada , OK with operating a drone within the confines of the airport. Fortunately it’s a case of improving the safe operation and maintenance of the extensive runway infrastructure at the airport.
EIA has two million square feet of runways, taxiways and aircraft handling aprons which are all subject to wear by aircraft and suffer from the harsh weather extremes which are common in Canada. Therefore regular maintenance inspections are mandatory. Undertaking inspections manually in the past could take days to perform, so EIA adopted the use of drones to complete inspections much quicker and with higher accuracy.
The Microdrone md4-1000 drone is flown by Canadian company AERIUM to collect Lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) data and photographic/video imagery of EIA’s runways. The data collected is used to more accurately predict when to conduct preventative maintenance on ground infrastructure used by aircraft. Drone operations were approved by Edmonton Airport in collaboration with Nav Canada and AERIUM. EIA has previously flown a drone to minimize the number of birds on the airport during aircraft movements and in the process conducted the first-ever drone night flight at the airport.
A X-37B lands at the Kennedy Space Center. (Photo: USAF)
X-37B orbital vehicle. Finally, the daddy-of-all applications for remotely piloted vehicles became more apparent on Oct. 27, at 3:51 in the morning when the U.S. Air Force’s X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle successfully landed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center Shuttle Landing Facility after 780 days on orbit.
The fifth mission was launched on Sept. 7, 2017 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida by a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. Looking like a miniature version of one of the retired Space Shuttle fleet, the X-37B is managed by the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, and ‘performs risk reduction, experimentation and concept of operations development for reusable space vehicle technologies.’ Long endurance stuff – the previous flight lasted 718 days. “This mission successfully hosted Air Force Research Laboratory experiments, among others, as well as providing a ride for small satellites,” said an Air Force spokesman.
The X37B provides a unique capability to test new systems in space and return them to Earth and enables the U.S. to more efficiently, effectively and rapidly develop evolving space capabilities. The U.S. Air Force is preparing to launch the sixth X-37B mission in 2020.
Final thoughts. As drones chug steadily along the path towards a rapid airborne delivery system, urgent deliveries to both submarines and hungry people ordering food are making progress. Heavy-Lift capability is evolving out of air-taxi research. The effects of trade wars and security concerns are touching established drone operations. We can now control huge aircraft remotely from almost anywhere. Runway inspection is being automated just like any other drone inspection/surveillance mission, and remote space operations are now regular practice.
It’s an expanding world of applications for drones, with many more different and perhaps unanticipated ones yet to come.
From growing crops to making movies, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are changing the way we work. UAVs — managed by unmanned aerial systems, or UAS — range from small indoor inspection units to giant Predator drones. They are streamlining how we manage mines and plants, deliver packages, and keep people safe. Read on to find out the latest in this skyrocketing market.
The unmanned aerial system (UAS) industry is in great shape! In the United States., the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) appears to be helping commercial operations get off the ground, at least for those wishing to fly small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
Things are certainly hopping for unmanned aircraft in agriculture, mining and construction, facility inspection, newsgathering, movies and promotion. Package delivery is on the way, and, of course, defense is cooking with new innovations. Everywhere you look, a specialized drone or new application seems to appear that has good prospects for success.
One helpful aspect of today’s landscape for UAS operators in the U.S. is the FAA’s supportive approach to small UAS (sUAS) for commercial activities. After providing a regulatory framework with Part 107 rules, albeit with quite a few caveats that require a written waiver application, qualified drone operators are now able to fly their drones in many places — as long as they are below 400 feet, well away from airports, and nowhere near any restricted airspace.
Pilot qualification courses and proficiency testing are both readily available — at 676 commercial facilities across the U.S. according to the FAA website — and a successful online application process should result in a remote pilot’s certificate.
With a drone registered with the FAA, you can use the FAA’s B4UFLY mobile app to check if it’s safe to operate where you intend to. If it is, you can get approval in real time using the FAA’s Low Altitude Authorization and Notification Capability (LAANC) system. The FAA qualified LAANC to clear commercial drone operations, and the service is now provided by a large number of independent UAS service providers.
With the regulatory and approval path in place, it’s now possible for companies and individuals to earn a living with turn-key drone operations, providing services for many applications that have blossomed. There’s work to do beforehand, but it’s less arduous than for manned flight operations.
Let’s look at a few of the applications benefiting from the automation, enhancement and remote operations provided by UAVs as well as their on-board sensor suites and after-flight processing:
agriculture
mining and construction
facility inspection
newsgathering, movies and promotion
package delivery
defense
Crop health analysis: Precisionhawk’s software PrecisionAnalytics—Agriculture automatically generates georeferenced orthomosaics from data collected with drone sensors. (Map: PrecisionHawk)
Agriculture
Agriculture has readily adopted UAVs to monitor, control and improve overall crop growth rates — a part of what is known as precision agriculture. Drones carrying optical, thermal and laser scanning payloads gather stacks of information about the condition and rates of growth in fields. The information is then fed into various analysis tools. A picture emerges over time that indicates the health of crops. This enables farmers to generate a formulas for the nutrient and weed-reduction chemicals used for spraying at various times of the year. It’s a customized “prescription” for each growing area.
Continuing UAV overflights during the growing cycle monitor the effects of growing conditions and the effectiveness of treatments, providing more feedback that lead to even further improvements.
Smaller tech-savvy farms might run their own programs, supported by local agrochemical suppliers that may provide analysis services or sell analysis tools.
However, there has been a real growth in the number of companies that supply an entire turn-key package — supplying and flying drones, gathering data, running analyses and providing written and graphic output to support the farming operation.
Unmanned aircraft are truly an integral part of this approach, which might only have been possible because of semi-autonomous UAS and the evolution of compact sensors: UAV-mounted infrared, high-precision optical and lidar.
A sample prescription map. (Map: PrecisionHawk)
Mining and Construction
Any mine site is a busy — even chaotic — place to conduct a commercial business.
Drones provide a way for mining operations to:
quickly collect information to enable volume calculations;
provide relatively inexpensive site surveys; and
manage traffic and set up daily road layouts.
In effect, drones enable more rapid control of a complex and dynamic undertaking. Additionally, they improve safety. Ground surveyors no longer need to dodge huge operating machines and tumbling ore, or scramble around difficult terrain.
An autonomous drone can gather timely, georeferenced imagery that can be turned into a precise 3D model of the site. Site managers can have immediate access to details of the UAV survey. They can see the extent of existing deposits and know where to support further mineral exploration, receive estimates of stockpiles and tailing volumes, ensure that personnel and equipment are in the correct locations, and compare aerial video and photography day by day to check progress and for record-keeping. Drones can carry a wide variety of imaging and sensor packages including visual, infrared, hyperspectral, lidar, sonar and radar.
It’s also quicker. For instance, using the senseFly eBee fixed-wing drone, a full aerial survey of an 88-hectare site took four to five hours, with about half of that time spent placing control points. To achieve the same level of detail, terrestrial surveying would take a single surveyor two to three weeks.
Construction Operations. The construction sector uses the same drone data-capture techniques for site details, off-line analysis and results tabulation to manage operations of complex work sites. Compared to mining, change can be more intensive during a construction project, so drone surveys might be repeated more often.
Surveying and GIS. Using drones is an industry unto itself, with high-precision RTK GNSS in the air and on the ground, and specialized analysis tools for high-accuracy applications. The speed of data gathering is the principal benefit to an industry that continues to be essential in many sectors. Lower precision GIS for asset tracking and the like could become a subset of the applications and tools already discussed.
Facility inspection. Outdoor and indoor facility inspection is definitely benefiting from the automation that suitably equipped drones and customized analysis tools can bring to both regular and infrequent inspection tasks. The number of regular complex refinery inspections can be significantly reduced. Inspections will no longer interfere with production and will improve safety for inspection staff. For instance, flame stacks that burn off excess gases can be prone to failure, so regular inspection is essential. Using a drone for the task is clearly much safer than using personnel.
An offshore oil and gas construction platform vents gases to relieve pressure. Flame stacks such as these require regular inspection. (Photo: Oil and Gas Photographer/Shutterstock.com)
BVLOS for Pipelines and Rail
Automated pipeline and railway track inspection have both become possible as drones are used over much greater distances, thanks to beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operational approvals by the FAA.
For BVLOS, users first need a validated sense-and-avoid technology on the drone. Also required is proven radio telemetry with uninterrupted command-and-control of the vehicle during flight, and an independent ground-monitoring system that confirms how the drone maneuvers throughout the flight.
In the case of a BVLOS flight this summer along the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, a Perimeter UAV manufactured by Skyfront flew about 4 miles, maintaining a constant above-ground altitude of 400 feet with multiple ascents and descents of 1,000 feet on 45-degree slopes. The long-range hybrid multicopter drone was equipped with Iris Automation’s computer vision collision-avoidance system and was monitored by
Launching a UAV for a BVLOS flight are (at left) Travis Balthazor, UAS flight operations manager, and Mike Kuni, UAS flight instructor/pilot, both of Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus. (Photo: KDOT, Division of Aviation)
Echodyne radars along the pipeline path, providing airspace situational awareness.
Another BVLOS operation built on the achievements of the Trans-Alaska pipeline trial has been authorized to fly a nine-mile linear inspection of power lines in rural Kansas.
Once again, the Iris Automation system will provide collision avoidance, but this drone also has an independent automated avoidance capability. This gives the drone the self-contained ability to fly around obstacles, so no ground radar or visual tracking is required.
Relieving the requirement for radar tracking or visual observers makes many new operations affordable. Previously, FAA Part 107 BVLOS waivers have all required visual observers or ground-based radar tracking — requirements that are not only expensive, but also restrict where flights are possible.
BVLOS operations like these demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the technical solution, making long-duration, long-distance inspection using drones feasible.
Indoor inspection is becoming possible with specialized drones that circumvent the need to expose inspection staff to especially difficult facility environments, which in the past also required production shut-down to protect them. Thermal and visual sensors on swivel mounts enable protected inspection drones to fly into tight spaces — or even back out of tricky situations — and make visual records that may otherwise be virtually impossible.
Searching and recording inside containment vessels at the failed Fukushima nuclear facility may have been significantly advanced by using inspection drones.
Newsgathering, Movies and Promotion
All those panoramic, overhead, moving shots you see on the news, in movies and in ads used to be taken from a manned helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft. Now they are mostly taken by multi-copter drones with high-resolution cameras. This makes cinematography and newsgathering much more affordable, making these fields accessible by smaller operations. In the past, only large media groups could afford to rent a helicopter. And, of course, it’s much quicker to bring a UAV onto an incident site, operated by a crew on the ground.
You’ll need FAA approval to use a drone for commercial newsgathering purposes, or find a suitable qualified UAV and operator. After gaining FAA qualifications, news people are also taking on the job, buying and flying the equipment and managing the video-processing software themselves.
Others using drones for similar purposes are movie makers, producers of TV commercials and real estate agents, to name a few.
Delivery by Drone
The ultimate objective of many internet suppliers is to deliver goods that were just ordered within minutes of the order being placed. This is a pretty big objective. It requires a whole network of “fulfillment centers” in and around many cities, a massive purchasing and goods movement capability to keep these centers stocked, and a system that delivers to the end-customer. Currently, we mostly have manned panel trucks of various flavors handling that last step of the delivery process, with real people reading the notes we put on the porch about where to leave our package if we’re out.
Order and Receive. The next wave of delivery changes are expected to include drones carrying your package from the fulfillment center to your backyard. Amazon is looking for approval to begin trials with its larger 88-pound MK-27 Prime Air delivery drone, initially in sparsely populated areas. The MK-27 is equipped with intelligent sense-and-avoid capability, flying around any obstacles it encounters in flight and even during delivery.
UPS is also hoping to get to qualification of its own UAS delivery system by the end of this year, to the same standards that manned aircraft delivery systems are certificated.
Medical Deliveries. Many other trials are underway, especially involving medical deliveries and support. In Africa, trials are underway in Ghana, Malawi and Rwanda. UPS recently proposed a medical supplies delivery service using drones in North Carolina. Many companies that claim expertise in medical deliveries are operating drones.
Food on the Fly. Restaurant food delivery services have seen an upsurge in popularity. It seems likely that soon you’ll be able to order and receive lunch really quickly by drone food delivery services. Ground robot food deliveries at George Mason University are already a huge hit! Uber-Eats is experimenting with drone food deliveries, and 17 drone delivery routes have already been approved in an industrial park in Shanghai.
Meanwhile, Bell has flown its autonomous pod transport (APT) 70 near its base in Fort Worth, Texas, for the first time. The APT 70 can carry a 70-pound package load at over 100 mph, far faster and farther than existing drone delivery systems.
Bell is aiming for package delivery and critical medical transport for disaster relief for APT type drones. It is also participating in the NASA SOI program along with General Atomics’ SkyGuardian.
Drones are a new tool. The UAS industry will continue to change and adapt these products and this technology in as-yet-unthought-of ways. It’s an exciting time, and right now, there seems to be no end in sight.
For a look at drones in the defense industry, see Murfin’s article “Defense in front of UAV development,” published in September’s Professional OEM + UAV newsletter.
The MQ-9B SkyGuardian will participate in NASA-sponsored flight tests in 2020. (Photo: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems)
The defense segment is going from strength to strength — despite a phase not too long ago when defense spending appeared to be dropping. Widespread drone use received a boost with specialized equipment developed for defense forces applications.
The Predator Advances
The General Atomics Predator has gone from a long-distance loiter-and-observe UAV to frontline precision-strike capability, and has been adopted by many military forces around the world.
From first flights in 1994 to initial production in 1997, the Predator has now evolved into many configurations equipped with piston engine, turboprop and jet; line-of-sight radio and satellite command and control; synthetic aperture radar and multi-spectral targeting system; video, TV and thermographic cameras; and laser designators and other payloads.
From pure reconnaissance to various strike and attack configurations, the names have also changed. Predator, Reaper, Gray Eagle, Avenger, Protector, Guardian and SkyGuardian have a host of RQ/MQ designations. For instance, In the RQ-4 Global Hawk name, the “R” means reconnaissance, the “Q” means unmanned aircraft, and the “4” is the series.
The SkyGuardian version of the Predator is a certifiable variant anticipated to ultimately become fully authorized for controlled airspace. It will take part in the NASA Systems Integration and Operationalization (SOI) demonstration program in mid-2020, which will highlight commercial UAS missions using larger drones in the national airspace.
The Predator family has now been evolving for more than 25 years. Unfortunately, the popularity of the Predator family of military unmanned aircraft has led to recent headline news about Predators shot down in the Gulf of Hormuz, or crashed in Afghanistan — such is the price of success!
Global Hawk Gathers Intel
The Northrop Grumman Global Hawk has become a U.S. mainline, high-altitude intelligence gathering asset, deployed by both the U.S. Air Force (RQ-4 Global Hawk) and Navy (MQ-4C Triton). Other friendly nations have also shown various levels of interest in acquiring variants, including Germany, Australia, Canada, Japan and South Korea.
Northrop Grumman has reintroduced the Firebird as a contender in the airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) field. The Firebird can be configured as unmanned (ground control), autonomous or piloted, and has payload flexibility through open architecture, plug-and-play integration.
The North Dakota UAS test range facility at Grand Sky has initiated procurement of two Firebird UAVs, which they intend to supply to their customers for mapping, inspection and monitoring applications using their extensive, long-range BVLOS capabilities.
Skyborg Equipped with AI
And then there’s this U.S. Air Force Skyborg program, which aims to drag the most possible out of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in an airborne fighter support roll. Kratos has flown the drone hardware a couple of times – the XQ-58A Valkyrie is a “low-cost” unmanned aircraft designed to fly alongside front-line attack aircraft like the F-35 and F-18.
The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is researching the technology, new sensors, payloads and networking capability these drones will be outfitted with to fly alongside manned fighter jets.
A whole slew of other extremely capable drones are already being operated by the U.S. Army and Navy in a variety of support roles.
Anti-Drone Detection and Prevention
On the flip side, an entirely new related industry segment has come about in the last several years, usually adapting existing radar, sound, infrared or other ground detection systems.
This segment is aimed at circumventing unwelcome drone encroachment over sensitive facilities. Airports, governments, prisons, and energy and water utilities are among the facilities who want to prevent unwanted drones penetrating their airspace.
Solutions may be portable and short range, or ground-based and longer range, with the capability to take down an invading drone or detect where it came from and provide significant warning time.
One solution uses an attack drone that ensnares an intruder-drone in a net and brings it the defender’s location to support second-level investigations. Whatever the solution, drone defense is a growing field.
