Two U.S. senators have jointly proposed a new bill that could expedite the commercial introduction of drones.
The senators believe the U.S. is falling behind other countries when it comes to creating rules for commercial drones. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) introduced the Commercial UAS Modernization Act, which would set temporary rules for those who want to fly commercial unmanned aircraft systems before the FAA establishes permanent laws regarding drone use.
Sen. Cory Booker
The Commercial UAS Modernization Act outlines basic rules for commercial use around registration, certification, insurance, tests and safety. Operators would be required to keep the drones under 500 feet, fly only in daylight, and operate within visual line of sight (LOS). However, the proposal also creates a deputy administrator position that would be able to make an exemption for a commercial drone operator for beyond visual LOS and for “heavier unmanned vehicles.”
“Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Deputy Associate Administrator, in consultation with the Administrator, shall expedite and expand exemptions from the interim operating restrictions otherwise applicable to unmanned aircraft under section 337,” the act reads.
Sen. John Hoeven
When GPS World talked with Sen. Hoeven this week, he emphasized that this bill seeks to accelerate the commercial use of drones in the U.S. and to make more use of the UAV test centers that the FAA has set up. These centers are capable of doing more, and can be the points that prospective drone operators visit to register their craft and take knowledge and proficiency qualification tests.
The bill gives tight timescales to the FAA to set up accessible locations to achieve registration and set up these operator qualification programs. In addition, the bill establishes a new deputy administrator position responsible for the safe integration of UAS in U.S. airspace, while also streamlining regulations that currently slow the industry’s ability to innovate new aircraft technologies.
In essence, the bill takes the core elements of the FAA’s past Section 333 approvals — less the requirement for a private pilot’s license — and makes them law. Operators would no longer need to ask the FAA for an exemption.
GPS World asked Sen. Hoeven if the FAA has responded to the proposed bill, and he said he would be meeting with FAA Administrator Michael Huerta on May 14. “This follows their rules,” the senator said, so his message is let’s move forward together.
After a rigorous competition, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has selected a Mississippi State University team as the FAA’s Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (COE UAS). The COE will focus on research, education and training in areas critical to safe and successful integration of UAS into the nation’s airspace.
The team brings together 15 of the nation’s leading UAS and aviation universities that have a proven commitment to UAS research and development and the necessary resources to provide the matching contribution to the government’s investment.
“This world-class, public-private partnership will help us focus on the challenges and opportunities of this cutting-edge technology,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. The Department of Transportation oversees the FAA. “We expect this team will help us to educate and train a cadre of unmanned aircraft professionals well into the future.”
The COE research areas are expected to evolve over time, but initially will include:
detect and avoid technology
low-altitude operations safety
control and communications
spectrum management
human factors
compatibility with air traffic control operations
training and certification of UAS pilots and other crew members, in addition to other areas.
“This team has the capabilities and resources to quickly get up and running to help the FAA address the demands of this challenging technology over the next decade,” said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta.
The FAA expects the COE will be able to begin research by September 2015 and be fully operational and engaged in a robust research agenda by January 2016.
Congress appropriated $5 million for the five-year agreement with the COE, which will be matched one-for-one by the team members.
In addition to Mississippi State University, the other team members include: Drexel University; Embry Riddle Aeronautical University; Kansas State University; Kansas University; Montana State University; New Mexico State University; North Carolina State University; Oregon State University; University of Alabama, Huntsville; University of Alaska, Fairbanks; University of North Dakota; and Wichita State University.
The FAA will determine the relationship between the new COE and the six UAS sites the FAA announced last year once the new team develops detailed research plans. The FAA expects COE flight testing to occur at one or more of the existing test sites.
Congress mandated that the FAA establish the COE under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. Like university think tank partnerships, the agency’s Centers of Excellence bring together the best minds in the nation to conduct research to educate, train and work with the FAA toward solutions for aviation-related challenges.
The Bramor RTK GNSS Post-Processing UAS is designed for surveying and remote-sensing applications that need a quick, high-precision set of results down to sub-centimeter level in the absence of a grid of ground control points. It is equipped with C-Astral high-rate GPS and IMU precision data-logging electronics. The system has both air and ground segments, consisting of a GNSS onboard receiver and ground base station. It has an L1 and L2 GNSS reciever (GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and Galileo-ready), plus a survey-grade antenna.
The QuestUAV Aqua Pro is designed for offshore/onshore data-gathering in fields such as environmental, gas and oil, coast guard and security. It is a fixed-wing waterproof UAV based on the QuestUAV 200 airframe.
The Aqua Pro is capable of offshore missions and recovery in both fresh- and salt-water environments. It can withstand pressure differentials induced by rapid temperature changes, and overcome complexities of waterproofing/marine-grade electronics, sensors and avionics. It uses a GPS unit from SkyCircuits.
NovAtel’s GAJT-AE GPS anti-jam technology is designed for military and security weight- and size-constrained airborne and ground unmanned platforms, including UAVs. GAJT-AE provides the null forming antenna control electronics for a four-element controlled reception pattern antenna.
The Riegl RiCopter is an unmanned multirotor UAS, integrating a high-performance and complete LiDAR system, the RIEGL VUX-SYS. The VUX-SYS comprises the VUX-1 LiDAR sensor, the Applanix AP20 IMU/GNSS system, a control unit, and up to four high-resolution cameras.
The Riegl RiCopter can acquire high-accuracy, high-resolution laser scan and image data. The excellent measurement performance of the VUX-1 in combination with a precise fiber-optic gyroscope and GPS/GLONASS receiver results in survey-grade measurement accuracy in fields such as precision farming, forestry and mining. The IMU/GNSS unit provides roll and pitch accuracy of 0.015 degrees and heading accuracy of 0.035 degrees. Riegl is a maker of laser scanners, and using a high-end unmanned airborne platform allows data acquisition in dangerous and hard-to-reach areas.
The eBee RTK by senseFly is a fully autonomous survey-grade mapping drone with a built-in L1/L2 GNSS receiver capable of receiving corrections from most leading brands of base station. This ensures high positional accuracy without the need for ground control points, so the aerial photography can produce orthomosaics and 3D models with accuracy down to 3 centimeters. It has 226 channels and tracks GPS L1, L2, L2C; GLONASS L1, L2, L2C; and SBAS.
Geodetics Inc. has teamed up with Silicon Valley’s Velodyne Lidar. Velodyne and Geodetics will work on a variety of initiatives to enhance each others technologies and products with the goal of offering a small-size integrated inertial navigation and LiDAR-based mobile mapping payload for UAVs and other autonomous platforms.
Payloads will include Velodyne’s HDL-64E, HDL-32E and VLP-16 real-time LiDAR systems combined with Geodetics’ Geo-iNAV inertial navigation systems.
Geodetics and Velodyne are exhibiting this week at AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Show in Atlanta, being held May 4-7 (booth 1500J and booth 2838 respectively). See our show coverage page for more information.
Velodyne’s LiDAR sensors are the highest performance LiDAR systems on the market in their size, weight and power class. Geo-iNAV is a fully-integrated GPS-aided inertial navigation system that provides real-time, high-precision positioning and navigation for manned and unmanned air, sea and ground vehicles. It combines GPS and proprietary sensor fusion technologies to achieve centimeter-level real-time positioning and navigation for dynamic platforms.
“We’re delighted to work with Geodetics to ease the integration process for our customers,” said David Oroshnik, Technical Sales Engineer, Velodyne LiDAR. “Our decision to support Geodetics is based upon the growing demand for cost-effective, small-sized, fully-integrated mobile mapping payloads that deliver performance traditionally associated with higher-end systems.”
“Velodyne’s LiDAR systems enable Geodetics’ products to reach new markets and customers by delivering high performance in a smaller package and for a lower cost than competing devices,” said Lydia Bock, Geodetics president and CEO.
With recent advances in unmanned vehicle technologies, the GNSS ecosystem has expanded to support such mission-critical applications as mobile mapping. These applications increasingly require more accurate navigation to accomplish their mission. The Geo-iNAV family of inertial navigation products delivers this capability with features that support reliable and precise navigation with a low SWaP (size, weight and power) profile for autonomous vehicles and payloads on manned vehicles.
Geo-iNAV is offered in several configurations designed to meet a wide range of requirements. It is available in commercial as well as SAASM configurations, meeting a wide range of inertial navigation application requirements.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) today announced a partnership with industry to explore the next steps in unmanned aircraft operations beyond the type of operations the agency proposed in the draft small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) rule it published in February.
“Government has some the best and brightest minds in aviation, but we can’t operate in a vacuum,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. “This is a big job, and we’ll get to our goal of safe, widespread UAS integration more quickly by leveraging the resources and expertise of the industry.”
FAA Administrator Michael Huerta announced the initiative today at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International Unmanned Systems 2015 conference in Atlanta, Ga. See more coverage of the show from Geospatial Solutons.
The FAA is working with industry partners on three focus areas, including:
Visual line-of-sight operations in urban areas: CNN will look at how UAS might be safely used for newsgathering in populated areas.
Extended visual line-of-sight operations in rural areas: This concept involves UAS flights outside the pilot’s direct vision. UAS manufacturer PrecisionHawk will explore how this might allow greater UAS use for crop monitoring in precision agriculture operations.
Beyond visual line-of-sight in rural/isolated areas: BNSF Railroad will explore command-and-control challenges of using UAS to inspect rail system infrastructure.
“Even as we pursue our current rulemaking effort for small unmanned aircraft, we must continue to actively look for future ways to expand non-recreational UAS uses,” Huerta said. “This new initiative involving three leading U.S. companies will help us anticipate and address the needs of the evolving UAS industry.”
The three companies reached out to the FAA to work on research continuing to expand use of UAS in the nation’s airspace. CNN and the FAA already have been working together through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRDA). BNSF has a draft CRDA that is nearly complete and PrecisionHawk has been working with the FAA on a possible research partnership.
Further developing these operational concepts supports the FAA’s overall strategy to expand UAS access, which currently includes rulemaking, reviewing operational data from the six national UAS test sites, expanding commercial operations via the Section 333 exemption process, and issuing operational authorizations for type-certified UAS.
The FAA published a proposed rule for small UAS on February 23, 2015 and received nearly 4,500 public comments by the end of the comment period on April 24. The agency will work as quickly as possible, but must address all the comments submitted before finalizing the rule. The number and complexity of the comments will play a role in determining the timeline for a final rule.
Today’s second announcement of a new UAV-related initiative by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was directed at private citizens: model airplane enthusiasts and hobbyists, also called modelers — not at industry or commercial use. See this story for information on the Pathfinder program for commercial drone use.
A soon-to-be released smartphone app will proved users with real-time information on flight regulations, and restrictions for the user’s actual location; alternately, for a location to which the user is planning to travel to for a model plane flight. Named B4UFly, the app is designed to answer for users, “Is it safe and is it legal to fly my model aircraft based on where I am right now?” The overall goal is to encourage responsible use of model aircraft.
The B4UFLY iOS app will be made available to 1,000 iPhone beta testers this summer. The first 700 emails received by [email protected]will make up the initial limited beta test group. Theemail is for model aircraft hobbyists only, who want to sign up for beta test. B4UFLY Version 1 for iOS will go out to the general public later this year. An Android app will come later.
“Someone who got their first UAV as a gift probably does not know [the rules governing flight and airspace operation],” said Jim Williams, the manager of the FAA’s Unmanned Aircraft Integration office. “It’s a knowledge gap that is very very important that we fill. Hobbyists and modelers need to know that there are very real consequences if you don’t have that knowledge. The recent Incident on the White House lawn provides a perfect case in point.”
The app was developed in cooperation with the MITRE Corporation. Key features of the B4UFLY app include:
A clear “status” indicator that immediately informs operators about their current or planned location.
Information on the parameters that drive the status indicator.
A “Planner Mode” for future flights in different locations.
Informative, interactive maps with filtering options.
Contact information for nearby airports.
Links to other FAA UAS resources and regulatory information.
The FAA’s Know Before You Fly campaign launched just prior to Christmas last year was a preliminary step in this effort.
Williams prefaced his remarks with, “These model planes and copters are ready to go, right out of the box. I know, I have one.” He then guided press through a brief look a clips and demo of the app’s key features. The app will provide real-time access to rules, requirements and restrictions based on location, and suggests specific actions to take if the user is:
within five miles of an airport
within a national park
within a restricted airspace (such as Washington, D.C.); and so.
The app will access the user’s location to automatically furnish this information. There is also a planning mode to see what data is available for a planned location to which you are preparing to go, although you are not there yet.
“Unmanned aircraft should always yeild the right of way to manned aircraft,” Williams stressed. “This is not the be-all and end-all of when and where you can fly. It does not alleviate the user’s responsibility to operate safely.”
In response to questions, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta clarified that the FAA currently issues flight restriction covering large public events, such as the Master’s golf tournament.
CNN will use Drone Aviation’s tethered drones to gather footage in in urban areas from never-seen-before angles and heights. The company’s WATT-200 was unveiled at the AUVSI this week.
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Administrator Michael Huerta announced two new initiatives related to unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) today at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Unmanned Systems 2015 conference in Atlanta, Ga.
Administrator Huerta told the large gathering of national journalists, “The unmanned aircraft industry is changing faster than any segment in the aircraft industry. A new project to harness that energy, the Pathfinder program, is partnering with three leading U.S. companies to expand unmanned aircraft operations in the United States.”
The FAA is working with industry partners on three focus areas:
CNN (Cable News Network) will research visual line of sight (LOS) operations for newsgathering in urban areas. CNN will continue working with Georgia Tech University to improve newsgathering for all organizations.
PrecisionHawk will investigate agricultural operations for rural areas, flying outside LOS.
BNSF Railway, second-largest freight railroad network in North America, will undertake inspection of rail infrastructure, also beyond visual LOS.
Huerta said that the partners, collectively, “are trying to push the envelope, what can we accommodate, accommodate safely, and what can we learn from that. We’ll test a little, learn a little, then test some more. How do we see a staged implementation? To integrate unmanned aircraft, but to do it safely, as directed by Congress. We’re trying to push the edges of what we can allow, working with partners who have specific uses and resources that they will apply to those.”
When asked for a timeframe to reach new UAV regulations, he replied, “I can’t comment a lot on the rule itself, but it’s fair to say that in the rulemaking comment process [which closed on April 24], we received more than 4,500 comments. It’s too early to say how those comments will shape what the final rulemaking will take. Assessment will be done in the coming months, perhaps by the end of the year, but that’s an aggressive timetable. This effort will go on as long as the partners want us to go on doing it. That’s not accomplished in six months, nor should it take a million years.”
As to LOS restrictions, and beyond LOS, he replied, “The framework of the previously published rule was focused on LOS, and on the use of visual observers in addition to the operator. Now we’re taking the next step, to explore beyond LOS uses. What are reasonable applications for that, and what mitigations for safety should be put in place for that? Everyone wants to get there. It’s important to figure out how we get there safely.”
What mitigations will be put in place for beyond LOS? A vice president of BSNF Railway said that the company is “working with FAA and several vendors around command and control infrastructure. This is yet to be fully defined. The railroad is a very safe an unforgiving environment. This doesn’t replace anything we’re doing today, it’s an addition.” He defined the operating environment as ” a 300 or 400-mile capability, to fly looking for broken rail, etc., beyond the visual, on-the-ground inspections that rail crews already do. ” He anticiated the use of “sense-and-avoid technology [for the UAVs], not using chase planes but perhaps using communications capabilities from cell towers and railway infrastructure along the right of way.”
The CEO of PrecisionHawk commented similarly, “We’re not changing much of our operational flow, just extending the baseline for it. We will implement a traffic-management technology, called Lattice, leveraging to ensure safety and reliability beyond the operator’s LOS.”
Gregory Agvent, CNN’s director of News Operations, said he looked forward to “some camera shots that were previously impossible for us, that now we’re going to be able to do.” Under the terms of the Certificate of Authorization (COA), Agvent said that “We’re capable of doing it [undertaking UAV missions] without asking for (FAA) permission” for specific flights.
The three industry participants concurred that they will work with their [UAV] partners in parallel with the rules to develop a certification process, so that the FAA can determine their vehicles are uniformly safe, the same way the y do with piloted aircraft currently. Both the railroad and PrecisionHawk have one currently operating flight platform each, and are looking at others, as theirs do not fit all applications.
“These are not exclusive [agreements],” emphasized Huerta, “limited to particular platforms or applications. This is a practical research effort to apply, learn, and integrate on the broadest scale.” When asked about possible further participants in the Pathfinder project, Huerta indicated the three companies represented on the briefing platform with him: “They came to us. You can interpret that as an invitation. We’re casting a very wide net. How do we et to a broader integration and implementation? We need multiple ways to gather information.”
Agvent urged, “It’s critical for manufacturers to come to the table, to get certified by make as opposed to individual models, to get free access to the sky.”
Huerta concluded, “We are learning together, as an industry and as a regulator. How can we collectively, as an industry, learn more in order to see a much more robust integration of unmanned aircraft into our aviation industry? We’re all interested in pushing the boundaries, and sharing the information broadly across the industry.”
The surprise preview of the pending announcement drew scores of curious and concerned industry representatives and exhibitors at the massive AUVSI show, who gathered anxiously outside the press briefing room, to which they were not admitted.
“The FAA is moving ahead with safe integration of UAS into the busiest, most complex airspace in the world,” according to an FAA statement issued prior to the briefing.”Even as the agency proceeds with rulemaking for small UAS, it continues to look at new ways to foster safe UAS operations by both hobbyists and businesses.”
The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s (AUVSI’s) Unmanned Systems 2015 show, held May 4-7 in Atlanta, convenes the global community of commercial and defense leaders in intelligent robotics, drones and unmanned systems.
Avyon, a sUAS (Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems) integrator and distributor, is using the Applanix APX UAV for its md4 fleet, to provide users with cost-effective direct georeferencing technology.
The integration of the Applanix APX-15 UAV on the md4-1000 and md4-3000 microdrones will offer solutions for unmanned aircraft while complying with weight and size restrictions for payloads. The APX-15 works seamlessly with all other airborne sensors such as digital cameras, LIDAR and other sensors, Avy0n said.
The APX-15 on the md4-1000 microdrone is on display at booth 1803 at the AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2015 show, being held May 4-7 in Atlanta, Ga.
“The integration of the APX-15 with md4-1000 and md4-3000 will provide users with a precision mapping capability, minimizing or eliminating the requirement for ground control points and making mapping missions more efficient,” said Mike Hogan, Avyon’s business development manager.
The APX-15 UAV on the md4 fleet will improve aerial mapping by eliminating GCPs (ground control points) for triangulation, as well as reduce the amount of overlap in the surveying process. This will increase efficiency and effectiveness for area flown per mission and the post-mission data processing, Avyon said.
“We recognize the need to provide the growing UAS mapping market with the same highly efficient solutions that we pioneered for airborne mapping over 15 years ago,” said Joe Hutton, director of Inertial Technology and Airborne Products at Applanix Corporation (xyHt pg. 14). “We are now offering a cost-effective solution that meets the size, weight, power and cost requirements of small UAS, and maintains the Applanix pedigree for quality and performance. We are pleased Avyon has partnered with us. The md4-1000 DMS-UAV is a powerful new solution.”
Trimble is partnering with unmanned aircraft system (UAS) manufacturer Multirotor service-drone, GmbH. The collaboration will allow Trimble to expand its existing UAS portfolio to provide its customers with additional solutions to choose from based on their aerial imaging project needs.
Multirotor service-drone, based in Germany, is a manufacturer of multi-rotor systems. Trimble will be Multirotor service-drone’s exclusive provider of multi-rotor vehicles for aerial mapping use in surveying, construction, mining, agriculture, oil and gas, and utilities. The combination of Multirotor service-drone’s stable and reliable platforms with Trimble’s industry-leading sensor technology and workflow efficiencies will provide customers with best-in-class solutions for aerial data capture.
Unmanned multi-rotor systems are powerful solutions for visually documenting smaller areas, vertical structures or environments where holding position is important. High-resolution imagery, orthophotos, terrain models and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) map deliverables created from multi-rotor data provide valuable information for the survey, engineering and agriculture industries that Trimble serves.
“We are very excited to partner with Multirotor service-drone. At Trimble we’re always looking for ways to meet our customer’s needs and enable them to solve the complex problems they encounter every day,” said Todd Steiner, product marketing director in Trimble’s Geospatial Division. “The collaboration will enable our customers to use a technology rapidly growing in popularity due to its flexibility and productivity.”
Drone Aviation Holding Corp., a developer of specialized lighter-than-air aerostats and tethered drones, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Drone Aviation Corp. (DAC), has received an order from specialized defense contractor Troll Systems for a set of Winch Aerostat Small Platform (WASP) aerostat systems.
Under terms of the award, DAC and Troll will jointly form a working group to integrate the L-3 Wescam MX-10 advanced optical sensor system into the WASP platform for an international customer. The working group plans on commencing integration in May with initial flight testing expected to take place by Q3 2015.
Drone Aviation also announced that CNN is working with the company to explore how their tethered drone technology might be used in newsgathering operations in urban areas, as part of its FAA partnership, also announced at the AUVSI show. CNN selected Drone Aviation to leverage its WATT-200 tethered drones to gather footage from never-seen-before angles and heights. WATT-200 was unveiled at the AUVSI this week.
DAC develops and manufactures the WATT Electric Tethered Drone, Blimp in a Box (BiB) and WASP aerostat product lines. The WATT Tethered Drone, as well as the BiB and WASP aerostats, utilize a secure, high strength tether line that remains connected to the ground for safe and reliable operations.
DAC’s systems are intended to provide semi-persistent, mobile intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (“ISR”) and extended communications for various applications. Each system can provide low cost, mobile ISR and mobile communications for days, weeks or months. BiB and WASP aerostats are currently in use in a number of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) applications as well as at State and Local Police and Departments of Transportation where they provide silent, cost effective day and night monitoring and mobile communications.
Drone Aviation is exhibiting this week at AUVSI Unmanned Systems 2015 in Atlanta.
DoD-owned WASP systems are currently participating in sponsored exercises and are part of future capability studies as part of the DoD’s evaluation of the WASP as a highly mobile, tactical aerostat for ISR and communications. The DoD-owned WASP systems have successfully completed operations in a series of the United States Army Network Integration Experiments (NIEs) and have been recognized by the Army as a tactical battlefield solution that can support soldiers on the ground.
“Drone Aviation is pleased to partner with Troll Systems to expand the capabilities of our WASP platform and to help them meet the stringent requirements of their overseas customers,” said Felicia Hess, CEO of Drone Aviation Holding Corp. “With the addition of the L-3 Wescam MX-10 optical package, we are greatly expanding the operational capabilities of the WASP tethered aerostat system, further demonstrating the platform’s ability to flexibly deliver simple, secure and cost effective tactical surveillance and communications to customers.”
Exelis has improved the way its CorvusEye 1500 wide-area airborne system processes and analyzes the vast amount of data it collects, which is crucial in helping customers make critical decisions, the company said.
CorvusEye 1500 is one of the programs Exelis is featuring at Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International’s (AUVSI’s) Unmanned Systems 2015 May 4-8 in Atlanta (booth #2449). From an altitude of 15,000 feet, CorvusEye 1500 provides color and infrared imagery of a city-sized area unavailable with comparable airborne systems. At Unmanned Systems 2015, visitors will see how users work with the real-time analytics and processed data to search for vehicle tracks based on location and time.
“It’s all about context,” said Dwight Greenlee, director, regional persistent surveillance, Exelis Geospatial Systems. “Conventional video surveillance systems with their ‘soda straw’ views can miss critical activities, making it hard to understand what’s happening over a wide area. CorvusEye now has real-time analytics that automate certain tasks. For example, users can set ‘watch boxes’ or ‘trip wires’ in as many as 10 areas of interest. Users are then alerted if anything moves in or out of that area, and they can automatically track that moving object. Because of the context provided by CorvusEye, users can be more confident in the data to make decisions.”
Another new capability in CorvusEye is the ability to cue a second sensor, such as a hyperspectral sensor, to scan a location for certain spectral “signatures” indicating the presence of a material or gas. Analysts also can easily integrate full-motion video sensors into the cueing capability.
Processing CorvusEye data post-flight provides analysts with a database of all moving objects in the entire scene, allowing them to gather critical forensic intelligence and enabling a better understanding of behaviors and patterns across the region.
At 15 inches in diameter and weighing less than 95 pounds, the CorvusEye turret and sensor package can fit on most midsize unmanned and manned aircraft and uses standard interfaces to swap into virtually any 15-inch airframe mounting location. CorvusEye is exportable to many military, intelligence and security customers around the world, Exelis said.
