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control stations developed for its UAVs.

While UAV Factory will concentrate on

developing craft such as the Penguin

UAV profiled in our first issue, this

new Octopus division is expanding its

offerings with a tracking antenna and a

gimbal launched at the show.

The new gimbal is known as the

Epsilon 140, in reference to its 140 mm

diameter, and contains stabilised day and

night cameras. Ozolins noted that the

package includes what he describes as

advanced image stabilisation and a very

powerful video processor.

He added that the Epsilon 140 is the

only micro-gimbal on the market which

has an onboard moving target indicator.

“When you have a wide field of view,

a person, for example, or a car or an

animal a couple of kilometres away

might account for only a couple of pixels.

But this software identifies any movement

between that object and the background,

highlights it for the operator, and having

‘seen’ it the operator can then zoom into

it to see if it is of interest.

Flyability announced the launch

of “the world’s first collision-tolerant

flying robot”, Elios (previously known

as Gimball) at the show to herald the

700 g, spherically caged quadcopter’s

transition to serial production by the

end of the year. This follows five years

of development through seven design

generations for Elios, whose diameter

of less than 400 mm enables it to fit

through manholes and access hatches

to inspect confined spaces in power

plants, pipe and cable tunnels, and

ships’ holds for example.

The Swiss company’s co-founder

Patrick Thévoz told us that the cage is

made from carbon fibre-reinforced plastic

rods joined into hexagonal modules

by 3D-printed reinforced plastic nodes.

(These nodes are the only remaining

3D-printed parts, as the company is

moving to faster techniques such as

injection moulding for mass production.)

The modules are held together by

ties so that damaged sections can be

replaced quickly in the field, while the

rods have a softer coating to protect from

impacts with sharp edges. The cage is

designed to absorb impacts with objects

at speeds up to the robot’s software-

limited maximum of 15 kph.

Inside the cage, the UAV is mounted

on a three-axis gimbal that mechanically

decouples it, allowing the cage to roll

over or around objects while the UAV

with its HD video and thermal cameras

remain stable, turn on the spot with the

robot and tilt independently to be aimed

at inspection targets.

The 2.4 GHz radio link works in a

licence-free band and uses multiple

antennae, COFDM and advanced signal

processing “to ensure that we will not

lose the signal as soon as we enter a

metallic environment or get out of the line

of sight”, Thévoz said.

Control software has to be adapted

to a robot that experiences very

strong disturbances to its attitude from

collisions. Also, the aerodynamics of a

robot compact enough to fit into such a

small sphere are complex because of

interactions between overlapping rotor

blades, their close coupling to the body

of the UAV, their high rotational speed

and thrust density, and the aerodynamic

effects of the cage.

A new development from

MicroPilot, Kyle Hayes reported, is a

tablet/smartphone version of its well-

established ground control software.

This, he said, is in response to customer

demand – using the software on a tablet

or even a phone rather than a PC gives

the operator more freedom to move

around while operating a craft.

This version, still in development at the

time of the show, is fully touchscreen, and

Hayes demonstrated how a waypoint can

be relocated using this approach.

The design is such that thumb control

is the primary tool, so that a tablet can at all

times be held firmly in both hands.

“You can control the flight, operate a

payload and so on using your thumbs,”

Hayes noted.

AUVSI’s Xponential

Show report

Unmanned Systems Technology

| June/July 2016

The Epsilon 140 from UAV Factory has

stabilised night and day cameras