UST008

AUVSI’s Xponential

Show report

themes as per customer requirement).

In the case of the series hybrid, the

IC engine powers a generator that in

turn provides the current needed by

each of the individual electric motors for

the multiple rotors. There is an optional

battery back-up for transient power

requirements.

In the case of the parallel hybrid

for a fixed-wing application, a single

propeller can be driven either by the

IC engine alone or in conjunction with

an electric motor/generator unit (MGU).

Thus the MGU not only provides power

for the craft’s electrical system, as per

the operation of a normal generator, it

can also work as a motor to assist with

take-off and climb, allowing a smaller IC

engine to be specified.

Technify Motors, Niels Mundt

explained, is the current name for the

German aircraft engine manufacturer

formerly known as Thielert. The name

change came when Chinese AVIC

International Holding Corporation bought

it from administrators in 2013.

This was the first AUVSI show at which

the company has exhibited as Technify

Motors, Mundt noted. Interestingly, under

AVIC ownership it is a sister company to

Continental Motors.

Currently Technify Motors is supplying

jet fuel/diesel piston engines developed

in the Thielert days, but it also has a

brand-new 3.0 litre V6 turbodiesel in

development, one that will operate on

a range of heavy fuels. It has already

flown, in a Reiner Stemme UAV, and

is expected to be certified for 2017

complete with that craft.

Bringing small UAV operations

firmly

into the age of big data and the

internet of things, Aeryon Labs launched

Aeryon Live at the show. According to

David Proulx, Aeryon Live is a web-

based “software as a service” platform

that delivers live streaming video and

telemetry from the aircraft to remote

viewers anywhere in the world, with end-

to-end security and low latency.

The platform also provides online

fleet management and equipment

management capability for commercial

and public safety operators, enabling

them to see what their UAVs and

operators are doing at any time, and

prove compliance to regulators and

insurers.

He also described Aeryon Live as the

foundation for preventative maintenance

and programmatic maintenance, repair

and overhaul.

A SkyRanger quadcopter on the

Aeryon stand pointed its thermal camera

down the aisle and streamed its pictures

and telemetry to a screen elsewhere on

the stand via the internet.

The data travelled across bonded

cellular connections (up to six) into the

company’s cloud, then back into the

convention centre’s infrastructure and

into a browser running on a PC on the

booth.

Proulx said the “glass-to-glass” latency

was only 5 s and that he had seen it

as low as three. This, he said, allows

decision-making in an enterprise or

police department to be centralised, and

collective expertise to be focused on

what the UAV is seeing and doing.

For pilot and fleet management, he

continued, rather than trusting people to

fill out forms, the system pulls live data off

the airframe and sends it securely to the

cloud for processing and analysis.

This enables managers to drill into the

records for any flight of any UAV to see

a visual record of where it went, whether

it strayed into controlled or restricted

airspace, what assets such as airframes,

batteries and payloads were used, how

high and how fast it went and who was

flying it.

No special client-side application

is needed to see the data, just a web

browser and log-in credentials.

On the aircraft side, the system logs

data on the performance and use

of all the components, which have

embedded sensors. Then analytics

Unmanned Systems Technology

| June/July 2016

Technify Motors has a 3.0 litre V6 turbodiesel in development