AirMast – Sky Mast for Communication and Surveillance

SPH Engineering presents a ready-to-fly tethered drone system – AirMast. Compared to some conventional mast systems AirMast is easy and quickly deployable mean to bring up sensors in the sky, not requiring operators specific technical knowledge. 

AirMast consists of ground module with intelligent winch system and a drone with lightweight 100 meter tether, consisting of cables for power and data transmission. Powered from ground by any type of power generator, the drone can stay in the air for extended period of time with no reliance on drone-batteries. AirMast is operated with UgCS’s ground-based command control software run on a durable tablet.

Compared to some conventional mast and tower systems, AirMast can be deployed by a single person in less than 5minutes. AirMast is capable of carrying payload of up to 1,5kg from video camera, to diverse sensing devices or mesh network extenders. High-bandwidth data channel is a part of the tether, which enables high-resolution video or other data transmission from the drone to the ground system.

According to the payload the AirMast can be used by private business or governmental organisation, ranging from perimeter control, event management, communication and cellular applications for strategic facilities, oil & gas pipelines and rigs, traffic control, emergency response, firefighting, mines, forests and national parks, disaster areas and mass events like a virtual mast.

“Paired with a Rajant BreadCrumb drone module, it can quickly deploy a network ‘tower’ for as long as necessary, all the while being mobile, too. Together with UgCS, this setup allows for the deployment and management of a mesh network of drones. In addition, flight data as well as video streams from multiple drone operators in the field can be quickly sent to a UgCS ground station operator, allowing to scan a large area in a short amount of time using drones, something that is very useful for search and rescue operations, photogrammetry and other fields,” said Janis Kuze, Sales Director at SPH Engineering.

“Rajant has married the latest innovations in flight with a communication network capable of taking drones greater distances, and for longer periods of time,” said Bob Schena, Chairman and CEO of Rajant. “Drone operators have been faced with weak radio systems and little payload versatility – until now. The AirMast Tether System with our BreadCrumb module gives companies and governments an easy way to establish a broadband network for their drones. With Rajant’s wireless nodes, they have a secure system that can scale with various payloads, giving them true mobility. In kinetic mesh, everything is constantly moving, including the infrastructure, allowing an expansive network footprint.”

Current ground-based version of the AirMast system uses a popular drone platform that is widely available, flight-tested and reliable – DJI S900 together with Elistair SAFE-T powering system.

SPH Engineering currently is developing mobile version of the AirMast. This will enable AirMast being used on a moving platform such as a truck or a ship. While retaining all of the before mentioned functionality, this will give the freedom of movement, opening opportunities to use the system non-stop.

Source: Press Release

Insitu to use Drones and HoloLens to Fight Forest Fires

Boeing is planning to  make fighting forest fires a lot safer for firefighters by using the latest technologies. Developed by their Insitu division, their system use large UAVs controlled via their INEXA Control system aided by Microsoft’s HoloLens.

The system converts INEXA Control’s 2D maps into an accurate 3D map of hazardous areas like the location of wildfires and also tracks manned and unmanned vehicles and fire teams on the ground.The information helps the fire chief solve problems and make decisions more easily while keeping staff safe and also share information more easily with others.

Source: YouTube

Qualcomm Tests Cellphone Networks for BVLOS

One of the main hurdles to drones’ ability to zip around the country delivering packages is a requirement that they stay within their operator’s line of sight during daylight hours. Qualcomm Inc. is working on a solution that’s been right before our eyes: cellphone networks.

The rules from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration exist to help prevent accidents with commercial aircraft and mitigate the risk that drones could get out of control in areas where it’s not safe for them to go. By tapping into the networks of towers that connect phones to each other and to the internet, drone operators would be able to track and maneuver them even when they aren’t visible.

The industry is desperate for a workaround to the FAA rules, which are hindering the widespread adoption of the devices, according to Tom Morrod, senior director for consumer electronics at industry researcher IHS Markit.

“This will have a particularly strong impact on retail and logistics uses for delivering goods,” he said.

Qualcomm, the largest maker of chips for mobile phones, has been testing its idea from the helipad on the roof of its San Diego headquarters. The location, the company says, is ideal because it’s inside airspace controlled by the nearby Miramar Marine Corps. Air Station and is regularly overflown by military aircraft. That provides lots of opportunity to prove the drones can operate safely in restricted airspace, go out of sight behind buildings and not get sucked up in the engines of an F-18.

Just like call signs used by the supersonic fighter aircraft that blast by, the drone has its own name, “Qualcomm 1,” and has to check in with Miramar control tower before taking to the skies. Qualcomm 1 is connected to the cellular networks and has so far done more than 550 flights in that congested area of “Top Gun” fame, gathering data in hopes of persuading regulators that drones can be safe on their own.

“With autonomy plus connectivity you have multiple mechanisms that ensure safety,” said Qualcomm’s Paul Guckian, who’s heading the research and development program to make drones more compatible with the new rules. “When you consider the safety of people on the ground and the safety of aircraft in the national airspace it’s all about fail-safe mechanisms redundancy.”

In general, advanced drones are smart enough to take care of themselves, Qualcomm says. Press an icon on a tablet or smartphone and they’ll head off to wherever they’ve been told to go. If a nosy seagull or building gets in the way, the drone will see it using cameras and computer vision and fly around the obstacle. If the battery runs too low to get to where it’s headed, it’ll stop and land safely.

What the cellular connection adds is backup safety and control. And a link to an existing network means drones can be easily tracked and flown in densely populated areas where they have the potential to cause the most mischief and also be the most use. For example, airports could be made into automatic no-fly zones for drones by adding software that could detect when the drone connected to cell towers near that airspace, and then either not allow the device to take off in the first place or force it to land immediately.

For companies like Qualcomm, removing the roadblocks may well be worth the effort. Like other chipmakers, it’s looking at drones and robotics as potential new markets that can help make up for a slowdown in smartphone and personal computer markets, where growth is minimal and declining. Market researcher Gartner Inc. estimates that there were 2.2 million drones sold for personal use last year, up from 242,000 in 2013. That’s still a tiny amount compared with the more than one billion smartphone units shipped last year.

Building the drone around the guts of a mobile phone gives Qualcomm multiple advantages over a group of independent components, according to Guckian. All of the computing power and communications technology comes in a small package that’s already been fine-tuned to make it last longer on a limited battery. That means a cellphone-based drone can be smaller, fly further or carry a heavier load of other equipment.

Qualcomm 1 has already had a fight with bees, which proved to be no threat, and has attracted the attention of birds who were worried about its proximity to their nests. Avoiding a bird in flight remains a challenge for the onboard artificial intelligence that Qualcomm is working on and will make it all the more capable in complex environments.

“Seagulls don’t collaborate very well so detect-and-avoid technology and the speed of that technology is very important,” Guckian said. “That’s a challenge we’re still looking at.”

Source: Bloomberg Tech

The company behind these pocket-sized military surveillance drones just got bought for $134 million

The Black Hornet is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

The leading maker of thermal imaging sensors, Flir, bought a Norwegian drone maker for $134 million, the company announced Wednesday.

Flir acquired Prox Dynamics, which makes the Black Hornet, a tiny nano-drone used by the military and law enforcement for surveillance and reconnaissance. The drone is deployed by throwing it in the air and is small enough to fit in a soldier’s pocket. Despite its compact frame, the Black Hornet carries three cameras.

The palm-sized aircraft is used by the U.S. Marines, the British Army, the Australian Army and Norway’s Armed Forces.

The two companies collaborated before the acquisition; Prox already uses Flir cameras and stabilization technology in its drones. Flir plans to improve on the Black Hornet and add the drone to its line of surveillance products.

Prox isn’t the only drone maker Flir has worked with. The thermal imaging company also joined with DJI, the Chinese manufacturer that controls roughly 70 percent of the consumer drone market, to make a camera for DJI drones that can film in complete darkness. Still, in the U.S. it’s currently illegal to fly a drone at night without a special waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration.

$134 million is a large sum for a company that’s only known for one product, but military contracts can be extremely lucrative. The U.K. Armed Forces paid $28.9 million for Black Hornets and another drone from Lockheed Martin in 2015, and AAI, an aviation defense manufacturing firm, was just awarded a $206 million U.S. Army contract to work on the Shadow drone.

President-elect Donald Trump wants to resume law enforcement access to military equipment, so Flir acquired Black Hornet at an opportune time, when its client base in the U.S. may soon swell.

Watch a video from the BBC explaining how British Forces used the Black Hornet in Afghanistan.

BY APRIL GLASER@APRILASER  

TO KEEP THE CRANBERRY INDUSTRY IN ITS BIRTHPLACE, A FARM TURNS TO DRONES, DATA, AND AUTOMATION

Cranberries in crisis

Keith Mann faces the same problem each year: frost.

The icy condensation is detrimental to his crop in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the modern American cranberry industry. As the temperatures drop into the fall months, the owner of 150 acres of cranberry bogs throws on some layers and preps a network of sprinklers, which spray enough temperate water to keep the vines above freezing until the sun rises.

This is no small feat. With hundreds of sprinklers deployed across his field, checking each nozzle would require a team of people working throughout the night. Recently, Mann came across a solution: a drone.

“I’ve always been an RC enthusiast,” Mann told The Verge. “I’ve had RC helicopters and planes since I was a kid. What I find most useful is I can scan over all my acreage in a short period of time.”

Last Christmas, he purchased DJI Phantom 4 drone. In the early morning, he sends his drone over fields, providing him an aerial view of the land, allowing him to point out where some of the sprinkler heads aren’t activating. “Flying at 300 feet, they stick out like a sore thumb.”

Mann is just one of many Massachusetts farmers who have been using technology in innovative ways to adapt to a changing climate, along with increased competition from farmers in other states. In the birthplace of the cranberry industry, tech and data might hold the key to survival.

The Cranberry Harvest, Island of Nantucket, 1880, Eastman Johnson. Held by the Timken Museum of Art

CHANGING WITH THE TIMES

Mann and his wife Monika now operate Mann Farms, which has become a forward-thinking farm within the Massachusetts industry. But he’s worked around cranberries all his life. “It’s a family business,” he said. “I’m a third-generation farmer on my father’s side, and a fourth-generation farmer on my mother’s.” His father holds the distinction of being the first to harvest the berries in the way that you’re probably most familiar: wet harvesting, when flooded bog fields are covered with floating cranberries. And his grandfather was one of Ocean Spray’s first salesmen.

FOLLOWING THE DEVASTATION OF NEW JERSEY CRANBERRY CROPS, RESEARCHERS BEGAN DEVELOPING NEW VARIETIES

The cranberry industry, as Mann knows, has long benefited from technology of the time.

The industry that produces the cranberry juices, sauces, and snacks we see today on grocery store shelves turns two centuries old this year. Cranberries had been known to Native Americans for millennia, but in 1816 a former ship captain named Henry Hall began cultivating the wild plants on his property after he noticed that they grew better when covered with sand. The industry took off from there, fueled by the use of cranberries aboard transatlantic sailing ships.

Introduced in 1953 from the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station and US Department of Agriculture, the Stevens variety of cranberries was a blend of native plants from Massachusetts and Wisconsin and has become an industry standard. Crops had been threatened by diseases, and juice had become popular with consumers. Compared to the native varieties typically grown by Massachusetts farmers, Brian Wick, executive director of the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association told The Verge that these newer berries are larger and produce more juice.

Farms in Wisconsin and Quebec, Wick explained, had a distinct advantage over their Massachusetts counterparts, and have come to dominate the industry. Because these farms are relative newcomers to the industry, they were able to start with the higher yield strains that had been developed by researchers. These high-yielding crops allow growers to become more effective right off the bat.

NEWER FARMS IN WISCONSIN AND QUEBEC HAVE A DISTINCT ADVANTAGE OVER THEIR MASSACHUSETTS COUNTERPARTS

This proved to be a particular problem for Massachusetts farmers, who are working on the oldest cultivated bogs in the nation. Renovating an existing field is an extremely costly proposition: Mann estimated that it would cost anywhere from $20 to $40 thousand per acre and would take fields out of production for years. This is a real concern for Massachusetts farmers, who have fallen behind Wisconsin and Quebec famers in total annual yield.

Competition from out of state growers isn’t the only thing that has Massachusetts farmers concerned: rising temperatures and a changing climate has presented itself as an issue for growers.

CLIMATE CHANGE & ECONOMIC FACTORS

While California has been in the headlines for the sustained drought that has been affecting its farmers, New England has been facing one of its own. The Cape Cod Cranberry Grower’s Association said in August that the drought was the greatest concern for the local industry. “Although bogs are built with in-ground irrigation systems, they are generally not sufficient substitution for natural rainfall, which yields uniform sizing of the fruit.” While the annual US crop has been expected to rise slightly over last year’s harvest, Massachusetts growers are expecting 5 percent drop in crop yields, due in part to the conditions.

Cranberries are a water-intensive crop. In addition to requiring water to grow, farmers need water to irrigate their fields during freezing conditions in order to prevent frost damage. Water is required for harvesting as well: because cranberries float, farmers flood their fields and use machines to disturb the berries, which allows them to be collected from the water’s surface. Drought conditions complicate each step, sometimes forcing farmers to tap into reservoirs to provide their crops with water, which depletes the already low water levels in the region.

Keith Mann

These troubles could be a sign of things to come for growers. In 2007, a report from Union of Concerned Scientists released the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment, which examined the changing nature of the region.

The report found that the climate of the Northeastern corner of the United States (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont) has changed. The rise in temperatures since the 1970s has shortened the growing season and reduced the snow cover that the region receives during the winter. And the concern from climate change isn’t just limited to rising temperatures: more frequent extreme weather events, such as droughts and hurricanes, can have an enormous impact on growers.

RISING TEMPERATURES AND EXTREME WEATHER CONDITIONS WILL HAVE AN EFFECT ON THE INDUSTRY

The report also singled out cranberry growers. “According to NECIA projections, by mid-century, cranberry production will be at risk in southeastern Massachusetts, especially under the higher-emissions scenario,” its authors reported.

The result is more difficult growing conditions for farmers. In the coming decades, the climate of Massachusetts could become more like that of New Jersey, the report says.

Higher temperatures are particularly troublesome for cranberries. Cranberries aren’t particularly suited for warm climates: they require chilled temperatures in order to grow, says Nicholi Vorsa, the director of Rutgers University’s Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research and Extension in Chatsworth.

“Cranberries essentially have to be adapted to winter, fall, spring, and summer,” he says. “The plant will produce the crop, but the heat stress the berries will be exposed to is the greatest threat to the cranberry industry.”

Exposed to prolonged heat and sunlight, the berries are susceptible to damage. But there’s even more to worry about: in a warmer environment, fungal infections and rot are more likely, especially if the crops are overwatered in an attempt to cool them, Vorsa says.

COPING WITH CHANGES

Despite the drought and competition from other growers, Mann says that his farm is on track to bring in a record harvest. Part of the solution is for farmers to optimize their farms as much as possible and to collect as much data as possible to guide decisions when it comes to production, Mann says.

Keith Mann

By using temperature and water usage data collected from his fields to optimize his irrigation system, Mann reports that he has been able to cut his frost damages “more than in half.” He’s also used less water by automating the sprinklers to go on at precise times and at the right temperatures. “Now, we wait right to the last minute, which means pumps start hours after they used to, and sometimes don’t start at all,” Mann says.

“LAST YEAR WAS THE BEST CROP I EVER HAD, AND THIS YEAR, WE’RE UP 5 PERCENT MORE.”

The results are quite promising. Mann declined to produce exact numbers, but he claims the increases in production on his farm were well above the average increases reported to Ocean Spray. “I’ve had, out of the past seven years, six of them have been some sort of record in crop. The trend is going up dramatically. Last year was the best crop I ever had, and this year, we’re up 5 percent more.” Mann pointed to the better irrigation systems as a component of that, but also that the new strains of cranberries play a major factor: a third of his crop is of the newest varieties, and produce more than double the heritage varieties he grows.

The Manns have invested in other technologies help offset the costs of running a farm. In 2015, he installed four wind turbines on his property, becoming the third-largest wind farm in the state.

Keith Mann

Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture released “The Massachusetts Cranberry Revitalization Task Force Final Report,” a 61-page document that outlined the efforts underway to address the variety of problems facing farmers in the state. It highlighted a number of potential solutions, such as bog renovation to help farmers update their crops and loan guarantees, tax credits, and grant programs to help with the financial burden of undertaking such a project. The report also recommended upgrading research facilities at UMass-Dartmouth and UMass-Amherst, and developing alternative energy development, much as Mann has done with his farm. “Massachusetts cranberry sector must respond to compete and remain sustainable,” the report’s authors wrote. “These improvements will position Massachusetts growers to be more strategically competitive, while being able to produce the quality and type of fruit demanded by a changing global marketplace.”

Across the industry, researchers including Vorsa have been working to continue to tinker with the various varieties of cranberries out there: new berries that will hopefully deal a bit better with higher temperatures and resist fungal infections. The Stevens variety, which has become a staple in the industry, was suited for the climate of the time that it was first released, in the 1950s. Newly developed varieties will be better suited for the new climate.

The threats to this crop are particularly ironic on Thanksgiving. Though many people will also serve apple pie — the American food of cliché — apples were in fact domesticated in the Middle East, and were introduced to the US by settlers. In contrast, Vorsa says, "The American cranberry is native to North America, which is why we’re eating it this week.”

by Andrew Liptak@AndrewLiptak  for The Verge