Insitu Tapped for STUAS/Tier II

Insitu won the long-awaited Navy/Marine Corps Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft System/Tier II contract, the U.S. Navy announced late 29 July, meaning Insitu's new Integrator vehicle will eventually take over for the Navy's leased ScanEagles, also made by the Bingen, Wash.-based company.

The company is being awarded a $44 million contract for the 24-month engineering, manufacturing and development of the STUAS/Tier II. Insitu says it will support two operational assessments. The first will determine if an early operational capability option will be exercised for the fielding of up to five systems in fiscal 2011; the second will support low-rate initial production of two systems, one each for the Navy and Marine Corps.

Initial operating capability is scheduled for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013, followed by full-rate production of up to 56 systems.

"Integrator provides unsurpassed growth capability for expanding into new and future missions," says Bill Clark, Insitu's STUAS/Tier II program manager. "With the award of this contract, Integrator will continue the Insitu legacy of supporting our troops in harm's way."

Competitors for the contract -- which has been repeatedly delayed -- included AAI Corp. with its Aerosonde Mk 4.7, Raytheon with its KillerBee and UAV Dynamics, a joint venture of General Dynamics and Elbit Systems, with the Storm UAS.

The Integrator is a larger, more capable version of the ScanEagle, and Insitu has said that winning the contract is a key goal of the company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Boeing.

Insitu CEO Steve Sliwa said the contract moves Insitu from a service provider to a prime contractor, a move it will undertake with partners Boeing, Harris Corp., Corsair Engineering and Black Ram Engineer Services.

Also, "we'll be taking all the lessons that we've learned from ScanEagle ... to make sure that Integrator sets a new standard going forward," Sliwa said in a 30 July conference call with reporters.

The Integrator will use Hood Technologies' electro-optic and infrared sensors, transmit high-resolution imagery through an L-3 Communication Systems-West data link and carry a Harris Corp. communications relay payload. It's capable of carrying multiple payloads and uses a plug-and-play capability that allows users to quickly integrate their sensors and payloads into the system, hence the name.

Clark said testing on the commercial version of the Integrator is basically complete and the system will be production-ready in the fourth quarter of this year. Any changes for the STUAS program are likely to be “small and limited,” Clark said.

Next UAV Caucus Event Announced 22 September, 2010

Congressmen Buck McKeon (CA-25) and Alan Mollohan (WV-01) are proud to announce the third Congressional UAV Caucus event for 2010. On Wednesday, 22 September, the Caucus will host a UAV Technology Fair featuring displays from Industry, Government, Law Enforcement, and more.

The event is open to the public and will take place in the Foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building from 10am until 2pm. Each display will feature exhibits allowing Members, staff, and the public to view and interact with the latest technology from America’s unmanned aerial systems. We encourage to you visit the Rayburn Foyer and view the exhibits on display.

In conjunction with the UAV Technology Fair, AUVSI will be organizing an "AUVSI Day on Capitol Hill" and coordinating meetings between Members of Congress or their staff and AUVSI members. If you are interested in participating and meeting with your representative or their staff, please register through the following link:

http://www.auvsi.org/techfair

Please contact Mario Mairena at mairena@auvsi.org if you have any questions.

MAGIC 2010 Selects Six Finalist for Robotic Challenge

The U.S. and Australian defense departments have selected six teams spanning four different continents to take the trip Down Under to compete in the first ever Multi Autonomous Ground-Robotic International Challenge 2010 — a competition similar to DARPA’s Urban Challenge being held this year in Adelaide, South Australia from 8-13 Nov.

The six teams are Cappadocia (Ankara, Turkey), Chiba (Tokyo, Japan), Magician (Perth, Australia) and U.S. teams RASR (Gaithersburg, Md.), Team Michigan (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Pa).

“All the judges were impressed with the magnitude of submissions from the teams,” said Grace Bochenek, the director of the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center, who announced the finalists. “These finalists have survived a rigorous assessment and elimination process against six other semi-finalist teams.”

The final six teams were whittled down from 12 semifinalists — 23 teams from five countries submitted entries to the competition. To select the finalists, Australian and U.S. officials evaluated teams on their ability to perform certain tasks while operating autonomously and mapping the robots location digitally. The aim of the competition is to develop teams of robots that can operate autonomously on the battlefield in situations too dangerous for soldiers.

“We are excited to work with the Australian government on this international collaboration,” said Bochenek. “MAGIC 2010 will go a long way to help foster the growth of the next generation of scientists and engineers both in the United States and abroad.”

AUVSI Forecasts 23,000 Jobs With Airspace Access

This afternoon, AUVSI briefed more than 50 congressional staffers, lobbyists and unmanned systems industry players on its new UAS industry jobs report — a research study that was requested by Rep. Buck McKeon, co-chairman of the Congressional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Caucus.

Entitled “Unmanned Aircraft System Integration into the United States National Airspace System: An Assessment of the Impact on Job Creation in the U.S. Aerospace Industry,” it details the many areas of the industry that could experience job growth if the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) opens the National Airspace System to unmanned systems.

Lindsay Voss, AUVSI research analyst and lead author of the report, discussed the possible job creation boost.

“Based on a lot of the participants in this study, [industry members] still expect to see growth in their organizations driven by civilian and commercial entities,” said Voss, despite the current lack of airspace integration. The report forecasts that if the NAS were accessible, 23,000 jobs would be created over the next 15 years.

“These jobs are just the jobs that will be having to do with the primary unmanned systems marketplace,” she said. “While 23,000 seems like a conservative estimate, it really does stretch beyond that when you consider the whole realm of possibilities that are out there.”

Among these possibilities are jobs in payloads, composites, more air traffic controllers and even insurers of unmanned systems, Voss explained.

By 2012, the report anticipates that small UAS will fly in the NAS, but full integration could occur around 2025. Voss said that this is a “critical component” to achieving the possibly $1.6 billion in wages over the next 15 years expected in the report.

“It’s really a community effort at the end of the day,” she said. “AUVSI is working to continue industry growth by supporting government, industry and academia.”

The report is available at the Congressional UAV Caucus website at http://uavc.mckeon.house.gov.

AUVSI CALLS ON FAA TO COLLECT ACCURATE, COMPREHENSIVE UAS SAFETY AND OPERATIONAL DATA

Following a 15 July hearing hosted by the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism on the role of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in border security, AUVSI has called on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to collect necessary data in response to comments made by Nancy Kalinowski, President of System Operations Services, Air Traffic Organization, for the FAA.

In her testimony Kalinowski stated, “while many view UAS as a promising new technology, the limited safety and operational data available does not support expedited or full integration into the NAS. For example, some of the data that we do have comes from the CBP [Customs and Border Protection], and while we have reason to believe that the safety data that we do have may not be a representative sampling of UAS operations, it is all we have. To the extent that this limited data from CBP are representative, they suggest that accident rates for UAS are higher than in general aviation and may be more than an order of magnitude higher than in commercial aviation.”

She continued, “while the CBP accident rate appears to be higher than general or commercial aviation, we note that CBP’s total reported flight hours of 5,688 are very small in comparison to the 100,000-hour standard typically used to reflect aviation safety data and accident rates.”

AUVSI believes the assertion that CBP UAS accident rates are higher than general or commercial aviation are inappropriate and detrimental to public perception of an industry that is working to create viable solutions for national security. The comparison of CBP UAS operation to general or commercial aviation is not a feasible comparison. UAS operation for homeland security missions differ greatly from general aviation activity, and comparisons between the two should not be made until the FAA allows similar UAS operations in commercial airspace.

As indicated in Kalinowski’s remarks, the FAA has insufficient data, and AUVSI’s members believe that such statements about the safety levels of UAS operations are premature without adequate data. Additionally, these statements generalize the safety of UAS operations based on insufficient data from limited activity from one user on one platform. On 6 April of this year, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems reported the Predator line logged One million flight hours by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, NASA, the Italian air force and U.K. Royal Airforce. On 14 April, the U.S. Army reported one million flight hours of various unmanned aircraft, including the Raven, Shadow, Hunter and Extended Range/Multipurpose (ER/MP) vehicles. While the majority of these flight hours are for warfighter and homeland security aviation activity, both examples show the availability of a larger representative sample.

UNMANNED SYSTEMS SERVING MANY ROLES IN THE GULF OF MEXICO

Arlington, VA – 15 July, 2010 – Unmanned maritime systems have made several technological advances in recent years and the BP oil spill is proving how valuable and effective those systems are for disaster relief efforts. In addition to disaster relief there are many uses for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) that are making an impact on our world today.

“UUVs can assist in missions from disasters to environmental research, port security and more,” said Michael Toscano, President and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). “Their ability to operate in depths and temperatures unsuitable for humans, for periods of time that are impossible for humans are opening up the possibilities for undersea research and security that has been unachievable until now.”

On Monday, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) installed a new 150,000-pound containment cap over the gushing Deepwater Horizon well and so far the new cap is containing the oil spill. The ROVs had to remove the old cap, unbolt the cut-off riser pipe and bolt a new pipe in its place, an easy task for human hands, but a task only a robot could do in the 5,000 foot depths where the work took place.

ROVs have been used in deepwater industries for more than three decades, mostly for routine maintenance, construction and monitoring work, but have been a focus of attention in responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. According to BP, a total of nine ROVs are deployed for various purposes in addressing the spill in the Gulf including monitoring the well, supporting attempts to activate the blowout preventer and holding a wand to spray dispersant into oil at the seabed.

In addition to the ROVs deployed by BP several other organizations have deployed UUVs to aid in response to the oil spill including the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), Mote Marine Laboratory, Coastal Ocean Institute at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and iRobot Corp. Their missions are not containment or repair operations but are scientific missions to help estimate the dispersion and environmental/biological impacts of the oil. These missions are intended to map underwater oil plumes and capture water samples where it is unsafe or impossible to put manned missions, and they are helping determine how to respond in the future.

MBARI’s Division of Marine Operations, under an agreement with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), sent a high-tech robotic submersible to the Gulf of Mexico to collect information about the oil plume from the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig accident for NOAA. Although satellites and aircraft can help show the extent of the spill at the surface, MBARI's autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) will help researchers understand the nature and extent of any plumes of oil that may be hidden beneath the surface of the ocean.

Aeryon Scout Breaks a Barrier at Farnborough

Canada's Aeryon Labs reached a milestone this week, when its diminutive quadrotor Aeryon Scout became the first unmanned aircraft to fly outdoors at the Farnborough Airshow.

Aeryon Scout, operated by Aeryon Labs' Marnie McVicar and the Canadian Centre for Unmanned Vehicles' Sterling Cripps, was the first of several small UAS that flew at the show. Others included the Bluebird Micro-B, Yellow Plane, the Advanced UAV, Fanwing and Vigilant. The vehicles were kept well back from the main flight area, and were small and difficult to see from the show itself, but at least one of the flyers, Bluebird, sent video back to display screens at the show.

Chris Gaskell, who was in charge of getting the UAS flights approved, said the flights represented baby steps, but the show and United Kingdom regulators were pleased with how the UAS performed and plan to have more, and larger, vehicles fly in the future.

A safety representative from the government was on site during the first days of the show “and seemed pretty happy with what we were doing, so that's a good thing,” Gaskell said.

The small UAS weren't the only ones to fly at Farnborough. As it has done in past shows, the 2010 show featured a netted area inside where vehicles could fly. One of those to take advantage of the indoor area was Aurora Flight Science's Skate, a foam-bodied, twin-engined vehicle that takes off vertically and can fly vertically or transition to horizontal flight using independently articulated motor pods, which are attached by magnets.

Other vehicles that flew in the netted area were small quadrotors flown by Bonningtons and Air 2 Air, both of whom provide aerial video services.

The indoor netted area was adjacent to the UAV Pavilion sponsored by AUVSI, which included displays from member companies, including Aurora and:

Aerial Surveillance Systems, which provides manned aircraft that can be used, among other things, to test payloads destined for use on unmanned aircraft;

Chandler May's Aeromech Engineering division, which displayed a model of its stealthy Fury A aircraft and information on its Sharkfin operating software;

Cloud Cap Technology, which showed several of its stablized imaging micro gimbals, aimed at small UAS, and its autopilots;

Datron World Communications Inc., which showed its high frequency and very high frequency voice and data communications systems as well as its Datron Scout, a version of the Aeryon Scout, which it has licensed from that company.

ViaSat/Enerdyne, which showed its data link systems and debuted the High Definition EnerLinksIII Airborne Modem Transceiver, which can simultaneously compress and transmit one or two streams of high definition video, or one to four streams of standard definition video, over a single downlink.

The UAV Pavilion also included a model of Northrop Grumman's new Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, which it will build with British partner Hybrid Air Vehicles for the U.S. Army.

New Unmanned Systems Announcements from Farnborough

LONDON – The Farnborough Airshow 2010 has seen a spate of unmanned systems-related announcements, with some new contenders coming into the market and established players looking for new business areas.

BAE Systems further discussed its Taranis unmanned combat air vehicle, which it unveiled earlier in July. Company officials say the development of the program's first unmanned combat air vehicle demonstrator is important not only to provide the United Kingdom with UCAV capability but to protect the U.K.'s aerospace engineering and knowledge base. The company expects to begin flying its prototype vehicle next year.

Boeing took the wraps off a new partnership with NASA that will allow it to use the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a Boeing 747 modified to carry the space shuttle from California, to instead fly the company's Phantom Ray demonstrator to California for testing later this year. Without that agreement, the Phantom Ray would have to be broken apart for transport to testing, slowing the process down, says Phantom Works President Darryl Davis.

Davis also says that Boeing is looking at its full range of unmanned vehicles, including its A160 helicopter and its wedge-shaped Phantom Ray platform, as it prepares to compete for the U.S. Navy's Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) program, which so far is only in the request for information stage.

Officials from Turkish Aerospace Industries further discussed the recently announced medium-altitude, long-range Anka UAS, which the company is developing for the country's air force but also could be exported. First flight of the system is scheduled for October 2010, with initial operational capability to follow in September 2011 and full operational capability by December 2012.

Ozcan Ertem, TAI's executive vice president for integrated aircraft, says if the Turkish military is happy with Anka's performance, that will be the best selling point for the system on the international market. He said TAI won't attempt to sell Anka as a bargain-basement system, but it also won't cost any more than the Israeli-built Heron systems the Turkish military has already ordered.

AAI Corp. announced that it has sold four Shadow UAS systems to Italy for deployment alongside NATO forces under a $64 million contract, the second international customer for the system in as many months; the company announced in late May that Sweden bought two systems. Deliveries to Italy are expected in 2011.

Longtime unmanned systems stalwart General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, meanwhile, announced that it's going a different way and offering a manned intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance system, one compatible with the same software that controls its remotely piloted Predator systems. The company has introduced Griffin Eye, a system that mounts a GA-ASI Lynx Synthetic Aperture Radar/Ground Moving Target Indicator (SAR/GMTI) and electro-optical/infrared cameras into small, manned aircraft.

Cornell Tops AUVC for Second Straight Year

Cornell University’s team topped this year’s 13th International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition, securing what could become a AUV Competition dynasty with its second win in a row.

The university’s staggeringly large team – 45 members including students that couldn’t make it out to SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego’s Transducer Evaluation Center for the 14-18 July competition – was able to pull out a first place win despite a glitch in their robot Tachyon which left the sub floundering to complete the highest point portion of the underwater obstacle course.

Twenty-one teams, six of them international, programmed robotic submarines to autonomously swim through a gate, touch colored buoys, follow an array of paths, glide over goal post-style hedges, shoot underwater darts through a window and drop an object in a bin. The final test of the course was to pick up an object, surface with it and then drop the item back down to the pool floor.

Cornell was able to complete each type of activity on its practice runs, but Tachyon seemed stuck in a time out before it could find the underwater object, which represented a drowning person. Despite the last-minute snafu, the team’s overall score, which included static judging on a paper and website, landed them the $6,000 top prize, made available by the AUVSI Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

The top-slot team had more than 200 in-water practice hours prior to coming out to TRANSDEC, according to team members, and also showed its work ethic on-site, competing informally with other teams to see who could get to the pool earliest for practice time—even as early as 5:15 a.m. when the day officially began at 7:30.

Even winning was not enough to hamper the team’s need to dominate — they spent the night of the awards dinner in the hotel pool working with one of their sponsors to perfect their Doppler velocity logger for next year’s competition.

The following teams rounded out the rest of the winning teams:

2nd: U.S. Naval Academy, $5,000
3rd: University of Maryland, $2,250
4th: École de Technologie Supérieure, $1,750
5th: Amador Valley High School, $1,000
6th: University of Texas at Dallas, $1,000
7th: Kyushu Institute of Technology, $1,000

Special Prizes:

Second Chance Award: University of Central Florida, $1,000
Best Group Presentation: San Diego City College, $500
Determination Award: Reykjavik University, $500

BAE Reveals Taranis, Boeing Announces Phantom Eye

Major defense contractors unveiled prototypes for two new unmanned aircraft this week, both of which are expected to fly next year.

However, they are aimed at two very different markets. BAE Systems on 12 July showed a prototype of its Taranis unmanned combat aircraft, a stealthy, autonomous vehicle intended to be capable of long-range strike.

“Taranis is truly a trailblazing project,” Gerald Howarth, the United Kingdom's minister for international security strategy, said at the unveiling at BAE Systems' facility in Warton, Lancashire. “The first of its kind in U.K., it reflects the best of our nation's advanced design and technology skills and is a leading program on the world stage.”

Taranis is a partnership between the U.K. Ministry of Defence and BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, QinetiQ and GE Aviation.

“Taranis has been three and a half years in the making and is the product of more than a million man-hours,” Nigel Whitehead, the group managing director of BAE Systems' Programmes & Support Business, said at the unveiling. “It represents a significant step forward in this country's fast-jet capability. This technology is key to sustaining a strong industrial base and to maintain the U.K.'s leading position as a center for engineering excellence and innovation.”

Phantom Eye

Boeing, meanwhile, has unveiled Phantom Eye, a hydrogen-powered, long-duration UAS intended to fly up to 65,000 feet and stay there for as long as four days.

The vehicle, unveiled at Boeing headquarters in St. Louis, will be shipped to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California this summer to begin a series of ground tests. First flight is scheduled for 2011.

“The program is moving quickly, and it's exciting to be part of such a unique aircraft,” said Drew Mallow, Boeing's Phantom Eye program manager. “The hydrogen propulsion system will be the key to Phantom Eye's success. It is very efficient and offers great fuel economy, and its only byproduct is water, so it's also a 'green' aircraft.”

Ford Motor Co. is providing the engines. Other Phantom Eye partners include Aurora Flight Sciences, which is building the wings, Mahle Powertrain, which provides propulsion controls, Ball Aerospace, which provides the fuel tanks, Turbosolutions Engineering, which provides the turbochargers, NASA and DARPA.

AUVSI Will Host a Congressional Staff Briefing on Recently Released Jobs Report

The briefing will take place on Monday, 26 July 2010 at the SVC Room 215 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Lindsay Voss, AUVSI’s Research Analyst will provide an in-depth analysis of unmanned aerial systems applications beyond the military, potential market growth and job creation, and the economic impact of removing regulatory barriers to UAS integration into the National Airspace System.

The briefing is open to AUVSI members and please contact Mario Mairena (mairena@auvsi.org) if you have an interest in attending.

NC State Builds on Experience to Win SUAS

North Carolina State University, which has participated in every one of AUVSI’s eight Annual Student Unmanned Aircraft Systems Competitions, took home top honors this year, conquering past reigning winners with its team of mostly experienced students.

The 10-person team, which flew their unmanned plane at Naval Air Station Patuxent River’s Webster Field Annex in St Inigoes Md., at the competition from 16-20 June, had only one student who had never been to the competition before. Made up of aerospace engineering, computer science and textiles majors, team leader Himler Michel said that the team, which placed seventh last year, focused on their strengths this year to take the top honors.

“We try to stick with one platform for at least one to two years, “ said Michel, of their virtually carbon copy of their 2009 plane. “We focus as little as possible on the actual air vehicle and focus on the software.”

Using the tail and wings from a stock remote control airplane attached to an in-house fuselage, the team autonomously took off and navigated, then completed in-flight waypoint changes and autonomously landed to take first place in the mission category of the competition. Despite the team’s eighth place oral presentation and sixth place/honorable mention journal completion, their flight was strong enough to propel them to the top spot overall, winning $9,700 in prize money.

AUVSI Speaks for Industry at UAV Caucus Briefing on NAS

This morning, representatives from AUVSI and various government agencies met with Congressional Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Caucus co-chairs Reps. Buck McKeon and Alan Mollahan in a roundtable briefing to discuss the increasingly high-profile issue of opening up the National Airspace System.

At the closed door meeting, which was attended by more than 50 government and business leaders, representatives from NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security joined AUVSI deputy executive director Gretchen West in voicing their past, present and future requirements with respects to flying UAVs in the NAS.

“AUVSI’s members are primed and ready to enter the civil market,” said West. “However, they’ve had challenges with access to airspace.”

This follows on the heels of the recent release of AUVSI’s UAS jobs market report, which was provided to members of Congress this week. It describes the potential employment boost opening the national airspace would provide the unmanned systems community. The report is available on the caucus website, http://uav.mckeon.house.gov.

“If we can accelerate safe integration into the airspace, then we believe we will see those numbers,” said West, of the projected 23,000 jobs that could be created over the next 15 years.

However, that is contingent upon the FAA creating a reasonable timeline for integration, which FAA representative Les Smith said should be detailed in a report due out this fall. He said plans for full integration have already been pushed back to sometime between 2018 and 2025, though the agency hopes to have small UAS flying by 2012. Smith said the FAA has been working for a year on small UAS integration.

McKeon suggested that clearing up some of the bureaucracy surrounding airspace integration would help the process. “I think 2025 is too long,” he said, adding the he looks forward to a better estimate from the FAA’s fall report.

Smith said that in addition to future technology gains and better regulations, the FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System will be key to the future of UAS integration.

“Next Gen is a transformational program,” said Smith. “We we have to work out eventually, and this is not today, not a near-term issue per se, [is] how do we handle communications between unmanned aircraft systems and air traffic control.” He added that the FAA is currently collecting unmanned flight data in collaboration with Insitu, makers of the ScanEagle, at its Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City, N.J.

There is another congressional hearing on UAVs, this time focusing on homeland security, scheduled for 15 July.

System improvements abound at Eurosatory 2010

PARIS – Improvement is the name of the game at Eurosatory 2010. Most of the unmanned systems on display here aren’t new, but are improved, with added capabilities and payloads.

For instance, Israel’s G-NIUS is displaying the latest variation of its Guardium family of unmanned ground vehicles, this one aimed at detecting and clearing improvised explosive devices.

The vehicle, named AvantGuard, is a tracked vehicle that’s somewhat larger than the wheeled Guardium and Guardium LS vehicles. All are in service with the Israeli military and all are based on the company’s Guardium software system.

Noam Seagal, the company’s vice president of marketing, says the new platform gains a ground-penetrating radar, a counter-explosive jammer (built by sister company Elisra), a Mini-Pop thermal surveillance camera, human and vehicle detection radar and more. It can also carry a remotely operated gun.

It can be used for “route proving,” or detecting improvised explosive devices, force protection, logistics support, cargo carrying and even mine clearing, Seagal says.

“This gives you the whole package,” including “ground dominance,” he says. “Once you are there, the insurgents are not there.”

Italy’s Oto Melara is displaying a new firefighting version of its ground robot family. Carlo Felice Bellotti, in the company’s robotic business, says the TRP1B vehicle, a larger version of the TRP2, was developed to meet the needs of Italy’s firefighters, and the company is getting feedback from users.

Poland’s PIAP showed its family of ground robots, which includes two new additions: The New Scout, which replaces the previous Scout model, and the Tactical Throwable Robot (TRM). The New Scout comes in two models, one for military use and one for law enforcement. The smaller TRM is used by Polish special forces, says Emanuel Neto, director of marketing for mobile robots.

United Kingdom-based Marshall Systems displayed a new, small ground robot, Questor, aimed at reconnaissance use. The company was part of the team that won the U.K.’s 2008 Ministry of Defence Grand Challenge and the Questar has spun out from that technology, says the company’s Mark Oldham.

The company’s larger Trakkar cargo vehicle has also gained a new “follow the leader” capability that allows its operator to instruct it to follow troops or meet them at a prearranged point.

On the air side, Germany’s EMT displayed a model of its new Museco helicopter, in development now. Rainer von der Mark, director of sales and marketing, says the production version will have twin-engines, rather than the model’s one, and should be flying next year.

The United Arab Emirates’ Adcom debuted its latest model in its Yabhon UAS line, the Yabhon-X2000, and several companies are showing surveillance systems based on small helicopters. For more on the show, see the August issue of Unmanned Systems.

Michigan Tops UCF in ASVC, Ending 2 Year Reign

A student team from the University of Michigan outmaneuvered 12 other teams, including two-year top performers University of Central Florida, to nab the AUVSI’s 2010 Autonomous Surface Vehicle Competition first place prize.

The 25-person team, which brought six people to the competition (held this year in Virginia Beach, Va., at the Founder’s Inn hotel pond), went from consistently placing last since the last two competition to taking home the $8,000 prize awarded by the AUVSI Foundation. Michigan credits its turnaround to its autonomous surface vehicle, which uses data logging to let them build upon each run. They were the only team to consistently get better in their three total runs through the course.

The Lord of the Rings-themed challenge asked students to build an ASV and maneuver it through two gates to a grab a Velcro ring located on a buoy, a point at which most teams got stopped up. But Michigan then proceeded around another blue buoy and swam through a series of green and orange markers down toward a purple hoop in the water representing a volcano in Mordor, where teams were supposed to drop off the ring. After getting stuck on a second blue buoy, the ASV finally became unstuck and made it toward the volcano, a feat no other team completed in the final round of competition.

UCF — which placed first last year and excelled in the first year of competition, when teams weren’t formally ranked —had the strongest run of the ASVC in its second-round qualifier, where it came mere inches from depositing the ring in Mordor with their surface vehicle’s pivoting arm, which it used to tuck the ring like a football player until it got to the final hoop.

“We’ve never tested that,” said team leader Chris Bunty, of the swinging robot arm. “That’s what we call intelligence.”

In all, the AUVSI Foundation awarded five first through fifth-place prizes to Michigan, UCF, the University of Rhode Island, Virginia Tech and the U.S. Naval Academy, respectively. It also awarded three judges awards for best communication to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, most modular design to Florida Atlantic University, best sportsmanship to both UCF and USNA, and finally excellence in component design to the National Cheng Kung University team, which traveled from Taiwan to compete in the competition for the first time this year. The only international team, NCKU opted to build its own motors from scratch, which proved challenging not only in engineering but also at airport customs.

“I brought this [engine] to the U.S., and I thought it would give me a lot of trouble, so I put it in my backpack,” said NCKU team member Tsai Hsuchen. “It went through the X-ray [machine] again and again.”

Next year’s competition will be announced in the next six weeks, according to organizers. It likely will still be located in Virginia Beach and tentatively has the theme of the four elements of air, fire, earth and water.