76 years to design things like special pumps, de-aerators or air-oil separators for their engines or for hydraulics systems used in aircraft,” explained Gary Armstrong. “There are a lot of similarities between race and UAV engines in terms of the power demands and duty cycles required of them and the safety needed from them, and we pretty much always do our custom work from blank sheets to produce an optimised solution from the ground up, so we anticipate being able to supply systems that fit UAVs’ tight constraints on things like weight, reliability and mechanical efficiency.” As an example of this reliability, Spintric’s air-oil separator has no moving parts that might represent possible failure points. The separator works by way of internal centrifugal forces generated by the separator’s interior channel’s shape, cavities, port and undulating manifold, and relief ports, which force air out of the oil before it enters the tank. The separator can be integrated anywhere in the return line of the scavenge oil. Intelligent Energy was on hand to discuss its ongoing work with Cyberhawk, a provider of UAV-based inspection services and data analytics for the supply of its hydrogen fuel cells to the latter’s UAV fleet. “We have three products,” said Andy Kelly. “Our 800 W and 1.2 kW fuel cell units are typically meant for fixedwing UAVs, and then our 2.4 kW cell is aimed at heavier commercial inspection UAVs, particularly multi-rotors carrying out linear inspections of power lines, pipelines and offshore wind, oil and gas. “These applications are what Cyberhawk are targeting with their fuel cell drones. At present we have several hundred units in the field across our end-users. “The extra endurance range enabled by the 2.4 kW fuel cell is key to their multi-rotors. If you only want to survey something a mile away, you don’t need a fuel cell, but if you’re surveying a 300 km pipeline, the capability of flying in the region of 150 km per flight is critical if you want to be able to survey pipelines with drones cost-effectively.” Cyberhawk’s data collection typically comes from the use of state-of-the-art cameras and Lidars, both of which are normally heavier payloads than industrystandard ones, reducing flight time. Cyberhawk’s UAV has a 7 kg payload capacity enabled by the high power output from the fuel cell, which is critical to Cyberhawk’s commercial services. Kelly noted here that the low mass of hydrogen means enough fuel could typically be stored for flights lasting 2- 3 hours with such payloads. The 2.4 kW product is designated the IE-Soar 2.4. It weighs 4.8 kg, outputs power at between 50 and 70 V, operates in environmental temperatures between -5 and +40 oC, and at altitudes up to 3000 m (although this can be customised depending on an end-user’s power requirements). MaXerial has developed an AIpowered solution for maintenance and inspection of vehicle components by which fleet managers can track the health and lifespan of their platforms and components. “We use X-ray computed tomography to scan through technical objects, taking about 2000 projections to reconstruct them with a quantitative volume in micrometre resolution,” explained Dr Roger Herger. “That allows you to measure minute things like crimp contacts, solder August/September 2023 | Uncrewed Systems Technology Show report | Xponential 2023 Spintric Technologies’ oil management components Intelligent Energy’s IE-Soar fuel cell is being used by Cyberhawk for its commercial UAV-based services
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