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AUVSI's unmanned Systems Events

10-18 April, 2010
USA

Celebrate Robotics Technologies and Innovations. Join AUVSI on 15 April for AUVSI Day on Capitol Hill with visits to congress and exhibits.

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AUVSI is organizing a UAV Pavilion at the Farnborough International Airshow 19-25 July 2010

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS Magazine

Unmanned Systems, AUVSI's monthly publication is an included benefit for AUVSI members. Subscriptions are available for nonmembers.

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS NEWS

New Bat Takes to the Air with Longer Wingspan

By: Brett Davis, Feb 26, 2010 9:44 AM

Northrop Grumman says a new variant of its Bat unmanned aircraft flew in January.

The Bat-12, which has a 12-foot wingspan, "increases the mission... more

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Northrop Grumman says a new variant of its Bat unmanned aircraft flew in January.

The Bat-12, which has a 12-foot wingspan, "increases the mission portfolio of Northrop Grumman's scalable Bat UAS product line," the company says. The new Bat also incorporates a Hirth engine and a five-bladed propeller with a low acoustic signature.

The company recently successfully tested the 12-foot and 10-foot wingspan Bats with an AAI Corp.-built Shadow UAS launcher. Bat has also demonstrated its capability as a communications relay using Northrop Grumman's Software Defined Tactical Radio.

Northrop Grumman is integrating and testing new payloads and systems with its Bat family, which was acquired from Swift Engineering last April. The Bat has been tested with a T2 Delta dual payload micro-gimbal from Goodrich Corp.'s Cloud Cap Technology Inc., Sentient Vision Systems' Kestral real-time moving target indicator and short wave infrared camera from Goodrich. In February, payload integration and testing was expanded to include ImSAR's Nano-SAR-B fused with Cloud Cap's T2 gimbal in a cursor-on-target acquisition mode.

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Northrop Grumman Global Hawk Aids Haiti Relief

By: Danielle Lucey, Feb 3, 2010 10:22 AM

Northrop Grumman, which has an exhibition chalet at the Singapore Airshow 2010, said in a press conference Wednesday that it has been flying a Block... more

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Northrop Grumman, which has an exhibition chalet at the Singapore Airshow 2010, said in a press conference Wednesday that it has been flying a Block 10 iteration of its Global Hawk over the last few weeks for the Haiti earthquake relief effort.

Edward Walby, director of business development for Northrop’s Global Hawk Systems division, said that the UAV was deployed from the Naval Air Station Patuxent River base in Maryland, which is monitored from the Beale Air Force Base in California, to fly 24-hour sorties in a diversion from its typical flight to the Middle East. Walby said that for every nine to 10 hours of imaging the Global Hawk performs, it takes roughly 500 images of the devastated country.

“You could provide that long time on station and immediately deploy it to the next station,” Walby said of the Global Hawk’s long-endurance capability.

The UAV is performing damage assessment using an electro-optic sensor and radar imagery that can determine building damage, road blockage and human activity. Walby said that despite the Global Hawk’s high elevation, it can show if a person is active, lying down potentially injured or likely dead. And at 60,000 feet, the Global Hawk was also able stay out of rescue airspace and coordinate some air traffic from above so that planes landing at the Port-au-Prince airport could be ensured of space on the ramp, said Walby.

“It works out very well in disasters when you have a lot of air traffic involved.”

In an example of other military alternatives to the Global Hawk the coming months, NASA will start using the unmanned system for hurricane and environmental monitoring research, taking samples of ozone and dropping temperature gradient devices into the ocean to see why tropical activity develops the way it does.

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Military Adapts Robotics Operation to Afghanistan

By: Brett Davis, Feb 2, 2010 12:41 PM

The shifting military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan is also shifting the way the military repairs its ground robots, says a U.S. Army project manager.

"The... more

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The shifting military focus from Iraq to Afghanistan is also shifting the way the military repairs its ground robots, says a U.S. Army project manager.

"The static operation in Iraq, bring the robots to use and we'll fix them, doesn't work in Afghanistan," said Jeff Jaczkowski, deputy program manager of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office at U.S. Army Tank-automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM).

Jaczkowski spoke at the opening day of AUVSI's Unmanned Systems Program Review 2010, which covered ground systems. The program continues Wednesday and Thursday on air and maritime systems, respectively.

Afghanistan's infrastructure is in worse shape than Iraq's, so it's easier to bring the repair people to the robots. To do that, the RS JPO has embedded repair teams with troops and has set up mobile repair teams that can visit Forward Operating Bases.

Logistically, that means that some user-replaceable parts are now stored with the units, where soldiers can do things like fix robot treads or wheels.

More robots are headed to Afghanistan as they leave Iraq; last summer there were 500 there, now there are more than 1,250, he said. One of the newest is a variant of the iRobot Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (SUGV), called the Mini EOD (explosive ordnance disposal). Dubbed the "Devil Pup" by the Marine Corps, a few dozen are in place now, with about 250 due in theater by this summer, he said.

Looking ahead, the Army is studying its future robot needs. Jon Bornstein, the chief of the Robotics Systems Division at the Army Research Laboratory, said ARL is looking at a variety of behaviors and systems, including ways to give robots greater autonomy to operate in areas with “both good guys, bad guys and noncombatants.”

The robots will also need to be more self-aware. For instance, a robot could run a diagnostic program and be able to tell its human teammates if it's "sick and can't do something ... That is a common theme; how to make the robot function like an average human does," he said.

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