The U.S. government is pushing ahead with developing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs, for land border security with Canada.
Officials of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said last week they would work with the Federal Aviation Administration to impose flight restrictions around a North Dakota air base where the new UAV will be tested.
‘We are working with the FAA to get restrictions on the airspace (above Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D.) during certain time windows when we fly, typically at night,’ said Gen. Michael Kostelnik, head of air and marine operations for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency inside the Department of Homeland Security that flies the pilot-less aircraft, known by their military acronym UAV, for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
The UAV, a version of the military MQ9 Predator B equipped with special cameras and other sensors, and with the ability to stay in the air for up to 30 hours, will be able to monitor remote and inaccessible regions of the border with Canada, officials say.
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MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is using the Draganflyer RC helicopter in their UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) Swarm Health Management Project, which is focused on surveillance and monitoring of ground based objects or vehicles. The goal is continuous monitoring using multiple autonomous vehicles in swarms, with distributed intelligent computer control and minimal human supervision. The multi-vehicle testbed developed by MIT uses several Draganflyer four rotor electric RC helicopters and a computer tracking and positioning system to monitor and control multiple unmanned aerial vehicles. The components of the system communicate with each other through Ethernet connections.
Even though the vehicles used are unmanned, each one would normally require its own ground based pilot, operating it by remote control. What MIT’s system does is place multiple UAVs under computer control. This removes the need for constant human attention and piloting. Not just one, but multiple UAVs, can be directed with MIT’s system via a remote connection. A swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles could be used to monitor a convoy or keep watch over a border. This could be especially useful to the military. The use of multiple UAVs would allow constant aerial surveillance, with new vehicles launched to take the place of ones in need of recharging or those that have been damaged.
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Finmeccanica subsidiary Galileo Avionica is to unveil an electrically powered vertical take off and landing (VTOL) UAV at this month’s IDEX exhibition in Abu Dhabi.
Designated ASIO, the system is being developed in conjunction with the Rome-based Unmanned Technologies Research Institute (UTRI). Galileo Avionica says that the UAV has fully autonomous capabilities and has been developed to support manoeuvre, urban and special operations roles.
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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are rapidly being developed and deployed, and the FAA on Tuesday published a UAV policy to outline how these aircraft can be used in the National Airspace System. The rules vary depending if the UAV is operated as a public aircraft (operated by the government), a civil aircraft or a model. Public aircraft operate under individual Certificates of Waiver or Authorization (COAs), which are issued after an FAA review of the program and its safety protocols. More than 50 COAs have been granted in the last two years, and a record number are expected for 2007. Civil aircraft must operate under experimental airworthiness certificates. Guidelines for operation of model aircraft are found in FAA Advisory Circular 91-57. Such aircraft may only be used for sport, and not for commercial or business purposes, the FAA notes. More policy statements can be expected as the technology and its applications continue to develop.
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Taoyuan County-based Yuan Ze University has recently achieved a breakthrough in the development of technologies for building unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for commercial use, the director of a UAV development project at the university said.
Wu Chang-huei, an associate professor at Yuan Ze University’s department of mechanical engineering, indicated that through the UAV computer system his team has developed, an unmanned vehicle can be made to automatically carry out various surveillance missions simply by punching in the coordinates of the appointed targets.
Wu noted that unmanned aircraft have been widely used to carry out military missions for many years, but it has only been in recent years that such vehicles have started to be developed for civilian uses.
In 2006, the Environmental Protection Administration contracted Yuan Ze to develop a commercial UAV system capable of performing automatic flight by following satellite navigation signals, he said.
With cameras, a UAV can also transfer images from the sky back to the control headquarters on the ground, Wu said, adding that the machine is useful for all kinds surveillance missions, including monitoring pollution at sea and the traffic situation on roads and highways. In addition, UAVs can be used for rescue missions in difficult to reach locations, such as mountainous regions or on the open seas.
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Pilots in the South have had to deal with them for over a year… now, pilots flying near the northern US border may have to share airspace with unmanned drones, too. Representatives with the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, however, tell ANN the 409,000-member-strong organization is continuing its efforts to ensure general aviation pilots aren’t put at risk by the unmanned aircraft, or needlessly inconvenienced.
As Aero-News reported Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently announced a Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could start patrolling a section of the US-Canada border by this fall, launching from Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota.
“While we know that the DHS eventually intends to deploy Predators along the northern border, our talks with the FAA this week revealed that there is no official timetable for starting the flights, nor has Homeland Security obtained a certificate of authorization from the FAA allowing their UAVs to fly northern patrols,” said Melissa Rudinger, AOPA vice president of regulatory affairs.
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Mercury Computer Systems announced VistaNav™-SSR, the fully integrated Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), which comprises a ground station, integrated VistaNav synthetic vision system, a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and various electronic sensor systems. Designed to drastically improve operational mission capabilities for airborne intelligence applications such as oil and gas pipeline monitoring and forest fire detection at an affordable cost, VistaNav-SSR (Smart Surveillance & Reconnaissance) is the first Mercury end-to-end product offering to be pre-integrated with an airframe architecture.
The VistaNav-SSR is based on the Vector-LRE airframe from IntelliTech Microsystems, Inc., a leading developer and manufacturer of autonomous vehicle technologies for sea, air, and space applications. The Vector-LRE is a small UAV capable of either remote-control operation or fully autonomous flight, and of performing a wide range of day and night scientific and surveillance missions including oil and gas pipeline monitoring, forest fire detection and monitoring, oil and gas magnetic surveying, precision agriculture, and more. As a tactical-class UAV, the Vector-LRE provides an excellent payload-to-weight ratio that allows the integration of multiple payload, navigation, collision avoidance, and communication subsystems onboard.
Leveraging Mercury’s 20+ years of experience in embedded computing and 3D visualization expertise, the VistaNav-SSR includes Mercury ACIP™ (Airborne Component Integration Processor) technology, which allows the integration of highly optimized airborne electronics and associated functions into a small, unmanned airframe.
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New Delhi, Jan 17: The Indian Air Force (IAF), which is celebrating its platinum jubilee, will showcase a new generation radar and an advanced version of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) at the annual Republic Day parade here Jan 26 that will conclude with a grand flypast by 36 aircraft.
Indra-II (Indian Doppler Radar-II), the second indigenously developed radar, has been designed by the Electronics Research and Development Establishment (LRDE), Bangalore and is being produced by Bharat Electronics.
“It has been successfully inducted into the IAF. It is a low-level radar which would play a vital role in the air defence network of the country,” an air force spokesman said at a preview of the contingent Wednesday.
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The Army successfully beamed video from unmanned aerial vehicles to an Apache AH-64 Block III attack helicopter in a demonstration, service officials said.
In recent tests at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, an Apache pilot in flight watched video beamed from a UAV that was 75 kilometers away. The UAV was the Future Combat Systems Class I Micro Air Vehicle, a small 50-pound, 3-foot UAV being developed for the Army’s Future Combat Systems.
The test checked the software, logistics and communications systems.
The video demonstration was part of a broader effort called FCS 1.1, which includes experiments with high bandwidth networking with vehicles, helicopters and UAVs. Today, the AH-64D has the ability to digitally send target information to ground vehicles; the idea with FCS 1.1 is to demonstrate how an Apache could share information with all sorts of forces.
The signal travels from the MAV to a ground station where it is beamed, encrypted, to the chopper in near real-time, program officials said. The AH-64 Block III’s mission computer, Manned/Unmanned Common Architecture Program, “has five times the processing power of what is on the AH/64D model,” said Larry Plaster, Boeing’s manager of Apache modernization.
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January 23, 2007: The U.S. Army successfully tested its battlefield Internet, by having a UAV transfer video, in real time, to an AH-64 gunship 75 kilometers away. This is all part of Future Combat Systems 1.1, a system of communications equipment designed to operate in combat equipment, and provide the same quick and flexible transfer of information we have become accustomed to on the Internet. Passing video around the battlefield requires wireless and encrypted communications. That sort of thing has been possible in offices and homes for several years. But on the battlefield, the ranges are longer, and the environment rather more severe. But the test showed that the system works, and other tests have had UAVs and infantry getting UAV video as well. The basic idea is for everyone to be able to quickly share data. Where this is already working, usually via improvised equipment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the results have been spectacular. The enemy is at an enormous disadvantage, and friendly troops are much safer.
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