AUVSI's Unmanned Systems magazine: July 2016

UNMANNED S Y S TEM S V O L U M E 3 4 N O . 7 | J U LY 2 0 1 6

LightningStrike Has X-Factor for DARPA State Farm Tests Out Wares From Airware

CLUTCH TIME

Infrastruture, Regs and Car Makers Ready to Go Driverless

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STAFFCENTRAL

Connection and Community in an Unmanned World

Brian Wynne President and CEO

‘

Connected vehicles

and roadways will lead to mass transportation intelligence and save us time, money and lives as we improve our infrastructure and optimize the movement

’

of people and goods.

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

Members often thank me for the opportunities and benefits their AUVSI membership provides.

Sometimes it’s because they are thrilled to see their company featured in our monthly magazine or in one of our informative email communications. In other cases, it’s because we helped defeat an onerous measure in their state legislature or that our webinars and events have provided valuable learning experiences for them and their employees.

Yet the real value of AUVSI is something that goes far beyond the membership features listed in our brochures. It’s the connections you gain access to as part of the AUVSI community. For over 40 years, we’ve been bringing the brightest minds in unmanned systems and robotics together. This is a community with every facet of the industry represented, where no question will go unaddressed and no innovative idea overlooked.

This connectedness is inherent in the technology we advocate for.

Connected vehicles and roadways will lead to mass transportation intelligence and save us time, money and lives as we improve our infrastructure and optimize the movement of people and goods. Each car contributes to the intelligence of all the others through the cloud; this distributed awareness reflects how

each part of the AUVSI community serves to add value to the others.

This month, we bring together industry, researchers, academics and regulators in the automated vehicle world in San Francisco to help #DriveTheFuture of transportation.

From July 18 to 21, the Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016 will take the Bay Area by storm and feature educational sessions, breakouts and a plethora of networking opportunities. This is truly an event where we’re inciting progressive movement in a rapidly advancing technical field that will contribute to our society more than we can imagine.

That’s not all though. Coinciding with that event, AUVSI is hosting its first-ever investor conference, Startup Connection. Building on this theme of connection and leveraging the incredible AUVSI community, we’re bringing entrepreneurs, startups and fresh ideas to the table with companies, financiers and channel partners to foster even more innovation. The inaugural event will include investor insights and technology demonstrations in an interactive format and culminate in matchmaking and speed networking in the afternoon.

With so many exciting events, technological and regulatory advances, and amazing people, it has never been a better time to be a part of the AUVSI community.

JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

CONTENT

32

CLUTCH TIME Infrastructure, Regulations, Tech Aligning for Driverless Cars

FEATURES

38

Good Neighbors in the Cloud Airware, State Farm Take Both Industries to New Levels

44

X-Plane Advances LightningStrike Takes on DARPA Flight Tests

DEPARTMENTS

8 MEMBER NEWS   

Saab Sea Wasp Gets Tested RE2 Signs $3.3 Contract With ARA Skycatch, DJI Release Mapping App

10 ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS   

14

22

AUVSI Launches Insurance Program General Robotics Releases Dogo FAA Pathfinder Tracks Drones Near Airport

12 ON THE RECORD John Mirisch Mayor of Beverly Hills, California

14 SUPPLIERS AND DEMAND Automakers Linking Up With Component Manufacturers

16 DISTRIBUTED LETHALITY DARPA Gremlins Takes on Third Offset

18 GOODBYE PASSENGER RATINGS? Uber, Lyft Going Driverless

16

38

20 IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR Starship Robot Treks Packages to Your Door

22 CITE PLAN City Lab Allows for Real-World Testing

24 XPONENTIAL 2016 AUVSI Closes Annual Trade Show

30 VIEWFINDER

Cover Photo: Tesla Motors.

Koh Sriboya Island, Thailand

52 SEE ROBOT RUN Researchers Train Robots Simulating Canine Methods

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™ UNITING INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGIES

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Officers John Burke Chairman of the Board Airbus Group Inc. Dallas Brooks Executive Vice Chairman Raspet Flight Research Laboratory Mark Gordon First Vice Chairman Stratom Inc. H. Michelle Kalphat Treasurer John Lademan Immediate Past Chairman Northrop Grumman Corp.

Directors 2014 – 2017 David Agnew, Mobis Technical Center of North America Neil Hunter, Iris Group Leonard Ligon, SAIC Paul McDuffee, Insitu Inc. Ben Miller, Draganfly Innovations Inc. Suzy Young, University of Alabama Huntsville 2015 – 2018 Peter Bale, Sentinel Robotic Solutions Mark Blanks, Mid Atlantic Aviation Partnership Thomas Dingus, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute Ben Gielow, Amazon Prime Air William Irby, Textron Systems Dave Vos, Google Inc. 2016 – 2019 Peter Cleveland, Intel Corp.

Jonathan Downey, Airware Jeff Lovin, Woolpert Inc. Lauren McCollum, Lockheed Martin Corp.

Waseem Naqvi, Raytheon Jim Thomsen, Seaborne Defense

Unmanned Systems is published twelve times a year as the official publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International 2015 by AUVSI, 2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400, Arlington, VA 22206 USA. Contents of the articles are the sole opinions of the authors and do not necessarily express the policies or opinion of the publisher, editor, AUVSI, or any entity of the U.S. government. Materials may not be reproduced without written permission.

Authors are responsible for assuring that the articles are properly released for classification and proprietary information. All advertising will be subject to publisher’s approval and advertisers will agree to indemnify and relieve publisher of loss or claims resulting from advertising contents.

Annual subscription requests may be addressed to AUVSI. Unmanned Systems is provided with AUVSI membership.

AUVSI 2700 South Quincy Street, Suite 400 Arlington, VA 22206 USA

2700 S. Quincy St., Suite 400 Arlington, VA 22206 USA Phone: +1 703 845 9671 Fax: +1 703 845 9679 Email: info@auvsi.org www.auvsi.org

AUVSI STAFF Brian Wynne, President and CEO, bwynne@auvsi.org Pam Rothaermel, Executive Assistant, prothaermel@auvsi.org MEMBER SERVICES AND CHAPTERS Melissa Bowhay, Senior Member Services Manager, mbowhay@auvsi.org Amanda Bernhardt, Chapter Relations Manager, abernhardt@auvsi.org Lucy Haase, Member Services Coordinator, lhaase@auvsi.org Elton Sinoimeri, Registration and Member Services Manager, esinoimeri@auvsi.org David Klein, Research Analyst, dklein@auvsi.org ADVOCACY AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS Tom McMahon, Vice President of Advocacy and Public Relations, tmcmahon@auvsi.org Mark A. Aitken II, Government Relations Manager, maitken@auvsi.org Scott Kesselman, Advocacy and Public Affairs Associate, skesselman@auvsi.org Chloe Svolos, Advocacy and Public Affairs Associate, csvolos@auvsi.org PUBLICATIONS AND MARKETING Brett Davis, Vice President of Publications and Marketing, bdavis@auvsi.org Lisa Fick, Senior Production Manager, lfick@auvsi.org Sage Price, Senior Marketing Manager, sprice@auvsi.org Danielle Lucey, Editor, dlucey@auvsi.org Victoria Bottlick, Graphic Designer, vbottlick@auvsi.org Kellie Sigler, Graphic Designer, ksigler@auvsi.org CONFERENCES AND EXPOSITION SERVICES Staci Butler, Vice President of Conference and Exposition Services, sbutler@auvsi.org Karissa Bingham, Meetings Manager, kbingham@auvsi.org Ellen Drudy, Senior Meetings Manager, edrudy@auvsi.org Lindsay Voss, Senior Program Development Manager, lvoss@auvsi.org Kathleen Cooper, Education Associate, kcooper@auvsi.org Mike Greeson, Senior Business Development Manager, mgreeson@auvsi.org Brian Gelson, Account Executive, bgelson@auvsi.org Wes Morrison, Account Executive, wmorrison@auvsi.org Alex Mann, Sales Coordinator, amann@auvsi.org OPERATIONS Bob Thomson, Senior Vice President of Operations, bthomson@auvsi.org Karen Blonder, Director of Information Technology, kblonder@auvsi.org Kyle Culpepper, IT Analyst, kculpepper@auvsi.org Samuel Gerdano, IT Support Specialist, sgerdano@auvsi.org Jasmine Casteel, Accounting Manager, jcasteel@auvsi.org Maria Ross, Staff Accountant, mross@auvsi.org Librada “Rosie” Brown, Staff Accountant, rbrown@auvsi.org AUVSI FOUNDATION STAFF Daryl Davidson, Executive Director, davidson@auvsifoundation.org Norma Floriza, Director of Operations, floriza@auvsifoundation.org Susan Nelson, Director of SeaPerch, nelson@auvsifoundation.org Janelle Curtis, Director of Programs and Development, curtis@auvsifoundation.org Cheri Koch, Manager of Events, koch@auvsifoundation.org Andrea Ansell, Manager of Communications, ansell@auvsifoundation.org Lydia Bae, Office Manager, bae@auvsifoundation.org

CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS Freelance writer Nick Adde has covered technology and personnel matters, primarily relating to the U.S. armed forces, since 1983.

Karen Aho, a freelance writer in western Massachusetts, reports and writes on science, business and housing. She can be reached at k.aho@msn.com.

Magnus Bennett is a journalist currently working with the BBC in the United Kingdom.

Barbara Levorson is a freelance writer and private music teacher in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Chantelle Polite is a former intern in the publications and marketing department at AUVSI. Jeffrey N. Ross is an automotive journalist who grew up in Detroit and now lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Marc Selinger is a freelance writer based in the Washington, D.C., area. He can be reached at marc2255@yahoo.com.

Rich Tuttle is a longtime aerospace and defense journalist and contributor to Unmanned Systems.

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

ASSOCIATION

EVENTS

FEATURED EVENT Automated Vehicles Symposium 2016 July 19–21, 2016 San Francisco How Close Are We to Driverless Cars?

Developments and Challenges to Automated Driving July 6, 2016 3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m. EDT Webinar

Index of Advertisers AUVSI Foundation ......... Inside Back Cover

CTIA ................................................................... 4

Micropilot Inc. .............................................. 47 NovAtel ........................................................... 36 Robotics Trends Media ............................. 48 Spectracom .................................................. 37 Trimble ............................................................. 1 Universal Technology Corp. ...................... 3

Volz Servos .................................................... 43

AUVSI’s Startup Connection July 18, 2016 San Francisco

Unmanned Systems Defense 2016

(Formerly AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems Program Review) Oct. 25–27, 2016 Arlington, Virginia

JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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Skycatch, DJI Release Drone Mapping App

Saab’s Armed Sea Wasp ROV Gets Tested Saab has introduced Sea Wasp, a remotely operated vehicle equipped with a robotic arm that can relocate, identify and neutralize underwater explosives.

At a press conference at the Navy League’s Sea-Air-Space exposition, Saab’s Bert Johansson, sales director for underwater systems, said the Swedish company built Sea Wasp to meet a broad agency announcement from the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office.

Saab was “a bit surprised” to win the contract, he said, but in 14 months delivered three Sea Wasp vehicles, which are hybrids of pre-existing technologies based on Saab’s Seaeye line of commercial ROVs. 8|

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

“We can reorganize this technology platform to meet some very specific requirements in a short time,” Johansson said.

However, the Seaeye platform had to lose quite a bit of weight, going from around 200 kilograms to only 90 for the Sea Wasp, which needed to be carried by a two-man team.

“That turned out to be the single most difficult thing in the whole effort,” Johnasson said.

Losing the weight gave the vehicle a very high power-to-weight ratio, allowing it to hold steady in currents of up to 2.5 knots.

The Sea Wasps have been delivered to the U.S. Navy EOD Group 2, the FBI’s Counter-IED Unit and the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division’s Counter-Terrorist Operations Maritime Response Unit, which will be evaluating and testing them over the next 10–12 months.

Photos: Saab, DataMapper.

Sea Wasp is based off Saab’s Seaeye platform, but is less than half the weight.

Skycatch, maker of commercial drone data software, announced the launch of Commander, its iOS commercial drone mapping app in partnership with DJI. Commander automates data capture with DJI’s latest drones, turning them into professional mapping tools.

DJI maintains a 70 percent share of the $2 billion consumer drone market, and its aerial platforms are used by two-thirds of businesses approved by the FAA to operate commercially, according to a company press release. Skycatch built the app using DJI’s open software development kit.

“The goal of DJI’s SDK has always been to facilitate the creation of a robust ecosystem of apps, such as Commander,” says Darren Liccardo, DJI vice president of engineering, systems and applications. “Professionals know best what the use case is for our aerial platforms in their specific verticals sectors.

Skycatch’s developers have made optimal use of our open APIs with their innovative mapping and modeling application.”

Commander will launch with support for DJI Phantom 3 Advanced and Professional, Inspire 1 and the new Phantom 4.

DJI drones and Apple iOS devices deliver user experiences for both home and commercial operators. Commander combines the two with streamlined data capture to further refine the user experience, creating a partnership of aerial data and analytics tools.

MEMBER NEWS

RE2 Robotics Signs $3.3 Million Contract for RADR Program

PrecisionHawk’s DataMapper software analyzed images of the earthquake taken using a fleet of drones.

PrecisionHawk Selected to Improve Post-Catastrophe Assessments The Munich Re Group has partnered with PrecisionHawk to enhance insurance assessments worldwide by providing faster response times and increased reporting accuracy in the aftermath of a natural disaster. The partnership recently developed following the earthquake in Ecuador that took place in April. PrecisionHawk collected drone imagery of the entire disaster site within days of its occurrence. The images were processed and analyzed in PrecisionHawk’s data software and delivered to Munich Re. Through this partnership, Munich Re aims to more effectively assess the extent of damages and respond to claims quicker.

“The cooperation with PrecisionHawk will speed up loss assessment and estimation of losses in the aftermath of a natural disaster significantly,” says Tobias Büttner, head of corporate claims within Munich Re. “Our clients will benefit not only from the high resolution of spatial data, but also from processing the data with algorithms. Combining these new algorithms and modeling methods with Munich Re’s claim expertise will enhance and accelerate existing loss-adjusting procedures for example by helping to deploy loss adjustment resources more efficiently.”

PrecisionHawk’s service team uses a fleet of drones, including its own Lancaster 5, a small, fixed-wing platform, to collect aerial imagery at the identified disaster site. The data are analyzed in DataMapper. In a 45-minute flight that covers nearly half a square mile, the drones can collect imagery at extremely high resolution and deliver data that can reduce the need to deploy adjusters to affected areas. The increased safety and efficiency of overall claims processing for members has piqued the interest of the insurance industry globally.

Textron Opens Service and Support Center Textron Systems has opened its new unmanned aircraft system training and maintenance facility in Blackstone, Virginia, which will serve as the new home of its training and global service facility for aircraft such as the

Textron Aerosonde and Shadow M2.

The new, 14,700-square foot facility adds 1,700 square feet and includes three classrooms and two simulator rooms. It also includes an engine test cell; air vehicle test cell;

RE2 Robotics announced that it has signed a three-year, $3.3 million subcontract with a division of Applied Research Associates Inc. located at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida. RE2 will provide mobile manipulation and ground robotics expertise for the Air Force’s Rapid Airfield Damage Repair program.

“It is highly likely if an airfield is attacked that unexploded ordnance, debris and extensive damage would need to be assessed and mitigated before steps could be taken to repair the site,” says Jorgen Pedersen, president and CEO of RE2 Robotics. “The primary goal of the RADR program is to keep humans out of harm’s way by rapidly and remotely assessing, mitigating and repairing airfield damage with mobile ground robotic systems. This is where we come in and provide out robotics expertise.”

RE2 plans to work closely with ARA and the Air Force to identify reach, lift, weight and dexterity requirements for RADR-specific manipulator arms. RE2 will utilize existing technology, such as the company’s DM4-A2 mobile manipulator and ForeRunner highspeed ground robotic platform, for demonstration and requirements generation purposes. RE2 will ultimately develop a mobile manipulator arm that will meet the needs of the RADR mission.

and space for air vehicle assembly, composite structure and engine maintenance, repair, and operations.

There are now about 40 employees at the site, which is named the Unmanned Systems Service and Support Center.

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FAA Pathfinder Program to Now Include Tracking Drones Near Airports

Air Force Plans to Invest in SUAS to Bolster Its Capabilities

The Federal Aviation Administration announced that it is adding a new area of research to its Pathfinder programs — efforts aimed at researching issues related to unmanned aircraft systems airspace integration.

In a cooperative research and development agreement with Gryphon Sensors, Liteye Systems Inc. and Sensofusion, the FAA is evaluating procedures and technologies that will identify unauthorized UAS flights around airports.

“Sometimes people fly drones in an unsafe manner,” says Marke “Hoot” Gibson, FAA senior adviser on UAS integration. “Government and industry share responsibility for keeping the skies safe, and we’re pleased these three companies have taken on this important challenge.”

The companies have prototype UAS sensor detection systems that will be evaluated by the FAA at select airports.

All airports have a five-mile nofly zone perimeter for unmanned aircraft.

The program is similar to the FAA’s efforts to detect UAS, in a partnership with CACI and the Department of Homeland Security.

“The collaboration between these companies and the FAA is another example of governmentindustry cooperation and is an important step towards the safe integration of UAS into the national airspace. Equipping airports with technology that can detect, track and identify UAS that are flying unsafely or in restricted areas will help ensure the safety of the airspace for all aircraft — manned and unmanned,” said AUVSI President and CEO Brian Wynne in a statement.

The U.S. Air Force wants to move quickly to deploy small unmanned aircraft into its arsenal, to help bolster a service that, after a quartercentury of continuous combat operations, is now “the smallest, oldest and least ready force in its history.”

According to a new 2016–2036 “flight plan,” the service has so far missed the boat on the small UAS revolution.

“With this nascent capability lying dormant, the Air Force must take significant steps to integrate and institutionalize an airmen-centric family of SUAS systems as exponential force multipliers across the air and cyber domains,” says the flight plan, released May 17.

The flight plan was revealed by Lt. Gen. Robert Otto, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

“The Small UAS Flight Plan outlines a vision and strategy for the continued development, operation and sustainment of SUAS over the next 20 years,” Otto says. “Integrating SUAS into the Air Force’s ISR portfolio enables a more agile force that will help meet future warfighter demands in both permissive and highly contested environments.”

The Air Force has traditionally been the home of large UAS systems, such as the Global Hawk, Sentinel and the Predator family. It does own some smaller systems, but they have largely been left to special tactics teams and used for limited objectives.

“However, SUAS have demonstrated their potential to execute a much broader range of full-spectrum missions in the future,” the flight plan says.

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

Despite that, the Air Force has no current plans to buy small UAS. Any unit that wants them can buy them, as long as they are cheap enough, but “we must recognize this ad hoc procurement model is an impediment to establishing a healthy, efficient and affordable future SUAS fleet,” the document says.

It also says that a single SUAS program office, attached to a major command, would help with acquiring and maintaining these systems.

Once it has such systems, the Air Force has some big plans for them, including swarming, using them for teaming operations with manned systems and as part of the “loyal wingman” concept where a manned aircraft could control SUAS to expand their surveillance or even strike capabilities.

They could also be used to suppress enemy air defenses; counter small enemy UAS; conduct perchand-stare missions in remote environments; drop sensors; study the weather; and provide over-the-horizon, beyond-line-of-sight reconnaissance, among many others.

In the short term, the document says the Air Force must “apply a substantial focus” toward SUAS research and development. Beyond that, it should focus on increasing manned-unmanned teaming, “while maintaining a central theme of enhancing, not replacing, the airmen within the system.”

In the long term, beyond the next decade, “airmen will find themselves fully integrated while employing multi-role SUAS across the range of Air Force operations,” the flight plan says.

ESSENTIALCOMPONENTS

ARIADNA Completes Simultaneous Flight

Dogo has a communications system, so it can be used in a hostage crisis.

General Robotics Releases Dogo Robot In June, Israel company General Robotics unveiled its newest robot, the Dogo, which is aimed at the defense and homeland security markets.

The lightweight, tactical combat robot can carry light weapons, which are point-and-shoot controlled by a human operator. Dogo weighs 12 kilograms and uses eight cameras to provide 360-degree views. The tracked robot was designed for special forces, SWAT teams and infantry missions. It is outfitted with a communications system, so teams can use it in hostage situations as a relay.

The company also released a new lightweight weapon station, called Pitbull, which can detect hostile fire and respond.

“Our solutions were developed to enhance force protection and enable realtime situational awareness and response. Being lightweight, both the Dogo and the Pitbull are easy and fast to deploy and are suitable for every type of mission in the field,” says Ehud Gal, president and CEO. “Interest in these solutions has already been expressed by various agencies around the world.”

Photo: General Robotics.

AUVSI Launches UAS Insurance Program DroneGuard

AUVSI announced the official launch of DroneGuard, a UAS insurance program designed for AUVSI members.

Developed in partnership with Willis Programs, a unit of Willis Towers Watson, and Global Aerospace, DroneGuard is designed for UAS owners and operators. The program delivers a broad range of coverage in an all-inone package, including protection for physical damage, third-party liability and personal injury, combined with cutting-edge risk management services to enhance AUVSI members’

operations, consumer safety and industry reputation.

Willis Towers Watson has experience serving the aerospace sector and has drawn on its industry expertise in developing DroneGuard.

The program is underwritten through Global Aerospace, a provider of aerospace insurance worldwide and a pioneer of insurance solutions for unmanned aircraft systems.

“This unique product underscores Willis Programs’ commitment to innovate and deliver the best solutions

The European ARIADNA consortium, led by the company Indra with participants CRIDA, ENAIRE and Fada-Catec, has completed simultaneous flight tests in a conventional airport of an unmanned aircraft in the presence of a manned aircraft. This test is one of the first instances in Europe of a drone operating in the area of conventional air traffic. The flight program was held at the ATLAS Experimental Flight Center, located in Villacarrillo, Spain.

In the first phase, a drone called Viewer flew, executing various maneuvers on the airfield, while the Indra MRI P2006T manned aircraft operated simultaneously.

A controller supervised the operation, giving separation instructions to the aircraft. The drone’s remote pilot had the position data of both aircraft provided by an automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast receptor.

An unmanned helicopter called Logo — which validated the feasibility of instrumental approach and landing procedures with vertical guidance based on satellite navigation — was used in an additional phase.

possible to clients,” says Tom Coughlin, national partner of Willis Towers Watson.

“We are very excited to partner with AUVSI and Willis Programs to provide a market-leading insurance product for UAS,” says Chris Proudlove, senior vice president of Global Aerospace. “With the extraordinary growth of commercial UAS in the United States, the time is right to bring DroneGuard to market.”

AUVSI members operating in the United States are eligible to apply. For more information, visit www.droneguardinsurance.com.

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ON THE RECORD

MAYOR JOHN MIRISCH John Mirisch serves as the mayor of Beverly Hills, California, which recently passed a resolution through the city council to develop a fleet of self-driving cars that would serve as public transportation in the area.

The original idea came last year in an article I wrote for the L.A. Business Journal as a potential solution to a first-/last-mile challenge in connection with regional mass transit. Beverly Hills is scheduled to get our first subway station in 2023; however, the regional transit authority, Metro, had no plans to include a park-and-ride facility at that station, or any other station in the vicinity.

But the more I thought about the idea, the more the potential for all kinds of benefits became clear. Currently, public transportation in the L.A. area is a second-class form of transportation. People use it because they have to — not because they want to. A municipal autonomous shuttle system, which provides point-to-point, on-demand service, would turn this paradigm on its head and become a first choice for transportation needs. It would provide mobility within the city for residents and visitors, including seniors, disabled and blind people, and children. It would help take cars off the streets, which would alleviate our traffic problems. It would also increase road safety, since AVs [automated vehicles] don’t get drunk or distracted.

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For people unfamiliar with the area, what are Beverly Hills’ public transportation needs and how would integrating driverless cars help fulfill that?

Like other cities and regions in Southern California, we suffer from too much traffic. A lot of the street traffic is a result of the inefficient use of the roads, with one person per car. Our municipal autonomous shuttle system would ... make more efficient use of the roads, both through ridesharing and through the technology itself.

What changes, if any, in the infrastructure would aid the driverless car project?

We’re working on solving logistical issues such as drop-off and pick-up locations. Current valet zones might be one possibility, in addition to loading zones. We are in the process of installing municipal fiber to the premises, which will connect the entire city with ultra-high-speed connectivity, which would allow communication between autonomous vehicles and our infrastructure.

The advent of autonomous vehicles, including our municipal autonomous shuttle system, offers itself some unique longer term land use opportunities. Parking requirements

could potentially be relaxed, leading to other possible land uses, including green space, affordable housing, etc.

Do you plan on doing any public education or outreach to educate the community about self-driving cars?

Absolutely. As a city we not only aim to be a model of using technology to enhance our quality of life, but we also aim to set standards in transparency when it comes to the workings of local government. As new information becomes available, we’ll share it with our residents and have already begun informal dialogues about the potential for autonomous vehicle technology throughout the city. There is a palpable sense of excitement about the potential of the technology and that our city has chosen to lead in its development and implementation to improve the residents’ daily lives.

What are the interim steps between now and adoption, and what timeframe does the council hope to have this concept up and running?

We are currently in discussions with all interested parties, from regulators at the state and national levels, to a wide variety of tech companies and OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], in addition to other policy makers. There needs to be a governmental framework to allow us to proceed with a pilot program, and we are actively working with the authorities to allow this to be put into place in an expeditious fashion. We’re convinced the technology will be ready for prime time long before the opening of our first subway station in 2023 and would hope to have a fully deployable system within five years or sooner.

Photo: Beverly Hills City Council.

What sparked the idea for Beverly Hills to adopt driverless car technology instead of more traditional transportation solutions?

As a city which is driven by innovation, we also look at the opportunity to layer on technology, which can enhance our quality of life. We can add automatic license plate readers and closed-circuit cameras, which can help our police with public safety; we can add sensors, which alert our public works department if a road needs to be repaired; we might even be able to add a street cleaning element to these municipally owned and operated shuttles.

AUVS I ’s JULY 18, 2016 HILTON SAN FRANCISCO UNION SQUARE San Francisco

AUVSI’S STARTUP CONNECTION IS FOCUSED ON THE CUTTING EDGE INNOVATIONS IN UNMANNED SYSTEMS AND ROBOTICS.

This event brings investors together with startups in an interactive format that combines demonstrations, presentations and Matchmaker Speed Networking.

Startups, entrepreneurs, and inventors will be matched with vendors, investors, and partners prospects in pre-arranged, back-to-back meetings.

REGISTER NOW at startup.auvsi.org

TECHNOLOGYGAP

Suppliers and Demands Auto Manufacturers Linking With Lidar, ADAS Makers to Survive Driverless Revolution

By Rich Tuttle

A German automotive manufacturing company’s recent acquisition of a division of an American sensor company is one of many moving parts in a tectonic shift in the global automotive industry that may someday lead to widespread use of driverless cars.

Continental AG of Hanover, Germany, on March 3 announced its buy of the ASCar unit of Advanced Scientific Concepts, based in Santa Barbara, California. Continental plans to produce the lidar sensor developed by the tech-savvy ASC and link the sensors with cameras and radars in a package to help a driver.

Such packages, called ADAS, for

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems, represent a step on the way to driverless cars, which may begin to appear soon. Meanwhile, ADAS units do six basic things: help in parking, monitor cruise speed, warn of forward collision, warn of lane departures, aid in night driving and detect objects in blind spots.

ADAS technologies were a draw at the last Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. ADAS-oriented tech companies came to CES to display their wares and vied for attention with traditional auto OEMs — which showed ADAS products of their own.

“That’s because we see the line that separates consumer electronics from automotive becoming more blurred that ever,” says Arunprasad Nandakumar, mobility team leader of the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

“There’s so much convergence between those two industries in terms of technology and in terms of consumer preference that it is driving this transformational shift in industry, because the OEM is no longer a traditional industry-driven manufacturing form. A lot of these OEMs are now becoming software companies.

They want to invest in software and software development. That is a huge

trend — a mega-trend — that is driving the automotive industry.”

The current cost of ADAS packages is high — up to $5,900 for BMW’s version — but because the market is potentially huge, roughly doubling from today to an estimated $9 billion in North America alone by 2020, competitors are elbowing each other to get to the front of the line. And the competition is across the board.

The auto OEMs are competing with each other. Tesla, for instance, hopes to get an edge by offering ADAS as standard equipment.

The tech companies at the same time are competing — and merging — with each other. Nandakumar says players include Autoliv, Bosch, Continental, Denso, Magna, Mobileye, Quanergy, Sony, TriLumina, Velodyne and ZF TRW. The future’s far from clear, but one school of thought says the auto companies and the tech companies may ultimately join forces. Developments in that direction include GM’s acquisition of Cruise Automation and Mercedes-Benz’s link with Velodyne.

All are feeling their way in this disruptive industry, trying to get their arms around a bundle of technologies and business models called CASE, for Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric. Because it’s hard to lead the pack in all four areas, developments are significant but incremental, according to Automotive News.

In 2012, Continental became the first automotive supplier to win approval of the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles to test highly automated cars on the state’s public roads.

"Utilizing four short-range radar sensors, one long-range radar and a

The Hi-Res 3-D Flash Lidar enhances the ADAS system, which carries out autonomous functions in vehicles.

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

Photos: Continental.

stereo camera, the vehicle is capable of cruising down an open freeway as well as negotiating heavy rush hour traffic,” Arnaud Lagandre, head of the High-Resolution Flash Lidar segment in Continental’s ADAS business unit, says in an email response to questions. “The High-Resolution Flash Lidar will eventually be integrated into that platform.”

Assuming it goes into mass production, the Society of Automotive Engineers International hails lidar as comparable to such watershed developments as the electric self-starter (1914), the automatic transmission (1940) and antilock braking (1971).

Continental’s High-Resolution Flash Lidar “allows instant, distortion-free and high[ly] reliable 3-D mapping from very short range to very long range,” Lagandre says. The technology “is not

prone to motion blur and [is] immune to shock and vibration … .”

The technology is so potent that companies are positioning themselves around it.

“Suppliers who don’t have lidar capability are either investing in some other supplier who has it or looking at developing the product themselves,” Frost & Sullivan’s Nandakumar says in a telephone interview.

“If there was one golden ticket to this market, it’s not about the one supplier you need to partner with, but it’s the best partnership that will eventually win the game of autonomous driving or driver assistance systems,” he says. “So it’s not about what competence you have in-house; it’s more about how best the partnerships you create will be leveraged in the market. And the Continental

Continental recently acquired ASCar, a maker of lidar sensors that enable a detailed field of few around self-driving cars.

acquisition [of ASCar] is one such example. There are so many more that are happening in the market.”

A number of challenges need to be overcome for truly autonomous driving to become a reality, says Lagandre. Crafting the proper legislation is certainly one. On the technical side, reliability and object recognition are vital. The vehicle also must “learn to look around the corner with the help of networking. The aim is to adapt early to the upcoming situation.”

Then there’s the challenge of “how the driver interacts with the vehicle in the various stages of automated driving.” But in the end, he says, it should still be fun.

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TECHNOLOGYGAP

Distributed Lethality Gremlins Program Seeks to Outpace, Overwhelm Adversaries

By Rich Tuttle

Four industry teams are competing to develop one of the first programs in a new Pentagon strategy. The Gremlins program aims to develop technologies that would allow aircraft to launch volleys of small, inexpensive unmanned aerial systems and then safely and reliably recover them in midair.

Competing are teams led by Composite Engineering Inc. of Roseville, California, a unit of Kratos Defense and Security Solutions Inc.; Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville, Alabama; General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego; and Lockheed Martin Corp. of Dallas.

The Gremlins would fly “with a mixture of mission payloads capable of generating a variety of effects in a distributed and coordinated manner,” says DARPA. This, the agency says, would give U.S. forces “improved operational flexibility at a lower cost than is possible with conventional, monolithic platforms.”

Eric DeMarco, president and CEO of Kratos, says advances in technology mean “you can put better and better payloads into our Gremlins, and so they’re extremely capable, low-cost, high-performance aircraft.”

“Cost is a factor, and if they can develop these technologies and integrate them into a system that can do what they’re seeking to do in the Gremlins program and keep it affordable, they’ve got a winner,” says Mark 16 |

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Gunzinger of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington.

Gremlins, and other programs that emphasize cost and performance, offer a glimpse of the Third Offset strategy, intended to offset advances in technologies by potential adversaries. In this sense, Gremlins and the other programs are similar to classified DARPA programs of the 1970s that developed the stealth and precision technologies of the Second Offset strategy, which is now beginning to fray.

The First Offset of the 1950s developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter any Soviet plan to invade Western Europe. But when it became clear that tactical nukes alone wouldn’t be sufficient, the emphasis shifted to the Second Offset.

Since then, U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East has given potential adversaries time to develop their own stealth and precision technologies.

This, in turn, has led the Pentagon to focus on the Third Offset, which stresses human-machine collaboration, and which depends on artificial intelligence and autonomy. But because potential adversaries are moving in this direction too, the idea is to stay ahead of them for years to come by continually choosing only the most promising AI and autonomy technologies.

“We are at an inflection point in the

power of artificial intelligence and autonomy,” Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said in a Dec. 14, 2015, speech. He cited a study by the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch that says the rise of the intelligent machine will define the next industrial revolution.

This is already happening in the commercial world in such areas as self-driving cars, manufacturing, 3-D printing and voice recognition software, Work said.

In the military world, he said, AI and autonomy “will allow entirely new levels of ... man-machine symbiosis on the battlefield.”

The Gremlins program will use AI and autonomy to operate in the context of an idea central to the Third Offset — distributed lethality, which means spreading weapons out to make it harder for an adversary to counter them.

Collaboration is another tenet of the Third Offset. For Gremlin vehicles to work together on a mission to, say, disrupt enemy air defenses, they would use technologies being developed in several other DARPA programs, including one called CODE, for Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment.

CODE, according to DARPA program manager Jean-Charles Lede, will develop and demonstrate “improvements in collaborative autonomy — the capability of groups of [unmanned aerial systems] to work together under a single person’s supervisory control.” The UAS, Lede writes, would continuously evaluate their own states and environments and present recommendations for coordinated UAS actions to a mission supervisor, who would approve or disapprove such team actions and direct any mission changes.”

In addition to collaboration, the Gremlins program will leverage such technologies as swarming and adap-

Image: DARPA.

tive electronic warfare. The Gremlins vehicles also will be able to operate in cyber environments.

A revolutionary and somewhat startling DARPA program that may be related to Gremlins comes not in AI or autonomy, but in materials.

The program — called ICARUS, for Inbound, Controlled, Air-Releasable, Unrecoverable Systems — aims to build small UAS that would “make precise deliveries of critical supplies and then vaporize into thin air.”

The unclassified description of Gremlins includes airborne recovery, but you could imagine one-way trips, too, if cost could be kept low.

In any case, ICARUS program manager Troy Olsson cites development of “structurally sound transient materials whose mechanical properties have exceeded our expectations.”

“Among the most eye-widening of these ephemeral materials so far

have been small polymer panels that sublimate directly from a solid phase to a gas phase and electronicsbearing glass strips with high-stress inner anatomies that can be readily triggered to shatter into ultra-fine particles after use,” DARPA says. “A goal of the ... program is electronics made of materials that can be made to vanish if they get left behind after battle to prevent their retrieval by adversaries.”

Two retrievals of sensitive aircraft in recent years — a stealthy F-117 that was shot down in Serbia in 1999 and a stealthy RQ-170 UAS that came down in Iran in 2011 — may have helped prompt this program.

It’s not known if ICARUS relates to Gremlins, but Deputy Defense Secretary Work said, “I want our [Third Offset] competitors to wonder what’s behind the black curtain.”

An artist’s illustration of the Gremlins program, which wants to splay out small, cheap UAS that can be recovered mid-air.

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TECHNOLOGYGAP

Goodbye Passenger Ratings?

Stars Aligning for Companies Like Lyft and Uber to Go Driverless

By Nick Adde

With the successes of ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber, and the impending advent of driverless vehicles, a marriage between the two would appear to be a certainty.

Predictably, industry and investors are moving forward to bring the union to fruition.

Uber recently conducted tests at its Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, involving a self-driven hybrid Ford Fusion. Lyft and General Motors entered an agreement in January in which GM promised to invest $500 million to develop an autonomous on-demand network, a rental hub and connectivity between the two companies’ arrays of services.

Those actions run parallel with the auto industry’s expanding interest in ride sharing in general. Volkswagen is investing $300 million in the Israeli ride-hailing company Gett, which provides mobility services in 60 cities around the globe, akin to those Uber and Lyft offer in the U.S. Toyota Motor Corp. announced the establishment in May of a memorandum of understanding with Uber. Under the plan, the two companies will expand vehicle-leasing options.

While some companies are short on specifics regarding plans to incorporate driverless technology into their respective projects, numerous media outlets have reported that some of these deals include fostering devel18 |

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opment of driverless technology.

“We see the future of personal mobility as connected, seamless and autonomous. With GM and Lyft working together, we believe we can successfully implement this vision more rapidly,” GM President Dan Ammann said in a corporate announcement regarding the venture.

For its part, Lyft sees the arrangement as part of a major shift in the way people use vehicles to move about.

“We both believe the transition to autonomous vehicles will not be single-car ownership, but a network of on-demand vehicles,” a Lyft spokesman tells Unmanned Systems.

“We are just scratching the surface on how people use ride sharing.”

The biggest challenges, the spokesman says, involve the development of the technology and the ability of policy makers and regulators to adapt to the impending change.

Aligning Policy To meet that challenge, five companies with high stakes in the ride-sharing and driverless-technology game joined together in April to speak as a single voice.

The five — Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo — chose David Strickland, the former head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to lead its Washington, D.C.-based SelfDriving Coalition for Safer Streets.

While acknowledging that challenges lie ahead, Strickland says that advocates should not expect to encounter the same obstacles that UAS operators are facing with the Federal Aviation Administration, for example.

Unlike the FAA, which operates essentially as a top-down overlord, NHTSA regulates automotive safety by collecting data, assessing it, and then reacting, Strickland tells Unmanned Systems.

“For us as a coalition, the issue is making sure that not only does NHTSA undertake foundational regulations and guidelines to help facilitate the pathway for compliance,” Strickland says. “We’re also working with states, who hold control over police, licensing and traffic laws, to develop as consistent a set of regulations as possible [so that] a fully self-driving car can be ridden in any part of America.”

Strickland and his staff have begun meeting with policy makers on Capitol Hill, focusing on scores of pieces of pending legislation in state houses across the country that would have an impact on its mission.

“We effectively have 51 regulators with different perspectives. We have no impediment toward innovation as long as cars meet safety standards,” Strickland says.

Issues such as whether a blind or elderly person can own and ride in a driverless car or whether all operators of such vehicles should hold driver’s licenses subject to current standards remain to be resolved.

Funding Self-Driving Cars Enthusiasm among investors remains high, however.

Shortly after its inception in December, Palo Alto, California-based Autotech Venture, a venture-capital firm specializing in ground transportation startups, invested $4 million in Lyft

Photo: Uber.

Uber’s self-driving cars recently made their debut on the streets of Pittsburgh, where its Advanced Technologies Center is located.

and will provide a strategy for linking the firm with larger auto manufacturers. The company plans on investing $5 million each in 15 startup companies that show promise, founder Quin Garcia tells Unmanned Systems.

“Tech giants are coming into the ground transportation space on one side. They want to monetize the hour we sit in our cars every day. With connectivity and autonomous vehicles, they believe they can do that,” Garcia says.

Garcia has been a fan of and adviser to Lyft since it was founded in a Palo Alto house in 2007, he says.

He likes Lyft’s focus on “geography and product line,” which centers purely on ride hailing in the U.S. He believes his team can help Lyft foster a healthy relationship with auto producers and forge a clear path toward the day when driverless vehicles provide rides to its customers on a regular basis.

“It’s better to let the people who know how to produce cars produce them and the company that knows how to operate a ride-sharing network to focus on that. We expect that these companies, Lyft and others, will be piloting autonomous vehicles in the near future and eventually transferring fully to autonomous vehicles,” Garcia says.

He cites the roughly 1,100 ground transport startups in recent years, most of which are focused on software services and electronics or buying, selling, insuring, driving and repairing such vehicles.

“The whole life cycle of the vehicle is our focus,” Garcia says.

Though it is difficult to pin down a timetable, Strickland believes driverless ride-hailing will become commonplace in about a decade in large cities like Washington, D.C., New York or San Francisco, where the tasks of navigating the streets and finding a

parking space are always challenging.

“Ride sharing is already massively popular in megacities. The question of when a driverless car will be in every garage is a little further off,” Strickland says.

As the former chief of the federal agency responsible for fostering safety on the highways, Strickland is firmly committed to bringing about the change.

“In 94 percent of all accidents, human error is an element. Fully self-driving cars answer for a lot of variables that make driving not as safe as it could be,” Strickland says.

“We could address the 32,000 to 33,000 fatalities by eliminating human error. We could [regain] all that lost productivity,” Strickland says. “That’s why these five competitors came together. It’s all to get to the same place — how to make traffic safer.”

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GETTING IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR Starship Technologies Treks Packages to Your Door

By Magnus Bennett

A small European technology startup is looking to take on the might of WalMart, Google and Amazon by revolutionizing the way goods are shipped and delivered in local markets around the world.

But while the big corporations are largely looking to the skies by developing unmanned aircraft for the delivery market, Starship Technologies has been taking a more downto-earth approach.

The company, which was launched in 2014 by two Skype founders, Ahti Heinla and Janus Friis, has developed “a last-mile delivery solution” — a battery-powered, six-wheeled, human-assisted” autonomous vehicle capable of carrying the equivalent of two grocery bags at a time.

The vehicle, which has been designed to operate on sidewalks alongside pedestrians, is currently being put through its paces in initial test runs across the United Kingdom, as well as Estonia and the U.S. The company maintains that the vehicle, which has an unladen weight of less than 35 pounds, will be able to make local deliveries from stores or warehouses in a time frame of between five and 30 minutes for less than £1 per shipment. It adds that it can carry items within a threemile radius.

Starship chief executive Ahti Heinla is no stranger to the world of robots, having competed in a NASA design contest in 2013 for a soil sample retrieval robot for Mars missions.

The former chief technical architect of Skype is confident that the Star20 |

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

ship technology will change the local delivery market in much the same way as Skype revolutionized the telecom industry.

“Our robots are a totally new class of devices that will provide a combination of low cost and convenience with less congested streets and zero emissions,” says Heinla, who developed the architecture of Starship’s robotic platform. “The robot has been in development for almost two years, and we’ve experienced unprecedented levels of interest and goodwill, so it’s great to now be taking the first step to rolling our little robot out for real.”

Starship, which has 45 staff spread between its headquarters in London and engineering facility in Tallinn, Estonia, says the robot is primarily intended for use in a suburban environment.

It is powered by a battery that can last up to two-and-a-half hours and travel at a “brisk walking pace” of up to 4 mph, according to the company.

It is equipped with a sensor suite that includes at least nine optical spectrum cameras as well as time-offlight range imaging cameras to aid navigation and situational awareness.

The tech firm says the GPS and computer vision-based navigation system uses proprietary maps and allows for two-centimeter navigation precision. The vehicles will only be able to drive in pre-mapped areas and will be monitored by remote human operators.

“The sensors create a bubble of situational awareness around the

robot, extending to seven to 10 meters when driving and up to 200 meters when still,” Heinla says. “The robot can detect other objects, their location, speed and nature, and filter out false positives. It can react by adjusting speed — stopping, speeding up, turning and so on. The robots can, at any given time, turn to human operators for assistance when making decisions in unexpected situations or for social interaction.

This is ensured by double-redundant mobile connection, streaming video and two-way audio.”

Starship is confident that the onboard cameras will deter anyone from attempting to steal one of the vehicles as it makes its round.

It says there have been no major mishaps during early testing along thousands of miles of streets.

The vehicle’s lid is also locked while the device is in transit and can only be opened by the intended recipient via a unique PIN code.

The robot was introduced for the first time in March, when it took to the sidewalks of Greenwich, London, following talks with local government officials.

Starship says the U.K. was chosen as its first testing ground because of the British government’s “clear commitment to autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles, making the country a world leader in this new and groundbreaking technology.”

The “public introduction program,” which is being rolled out across the U.K., has been drawn up to test social acceptance of the vehicles ahead

TESTING,TESTING

Photos: Starship Technologies.

Skype founders invented the robot as a last-mile delivery solution. The company is currently in talks with larger retailers to use its robots for their businesses’ delivery needs.

of full trials planned for later this year.

“So far, we have met 200,000 people in more than 2,500 miles of driving on pavement and gauged their reaction,” Heinla tells Unmanned Systems.

“The most surprising outcome has been lack of any reaction by more than 80 percent of people,” he says.

“The rest has been overwhelmingly positive. Testing will continue over the next six months and then gradually become trial delivery services. We’re planning to make the first deliveries in the coming months.”

Denise Hyland, leader of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, says Starship’s technology had the potential to transform the local delivery of goods and groceries.

“The trial complements the work being undertaken by the Royal Borough of Greenwich on smart city innovation — work that we believe will be significant for all cities in the future,” she says.

In the meantime, Starship is negotiating with local government officials across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, seeking permission to extend the network of sidewalks the vehicle can use.

It is also talking to potential service partners in order to take the project forward.

“We are currently in talks with a number of big-name retail and logistics firms and hundreds of smaller ones — and we hope to be able to confirm more details soon,” the company said in May. JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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CITE PLAN Laboratory Lets Unmanned, Telecom, Energy Solutions Test in Real-World City Scenario

By Karen Aho Very rarely are towns built that, by design, will never be occupied.

Grigory Potemkin, a provincial governor in 18th century Russia, reputedly erected a series of fake villages to impress his lover Empress Catherine II on her travels, although historians have disputed the tale.

Today we might find an occasional movie set left standing or a scattering of living history museums. A growing number of futuristic cities are also empty, but only because the people have yet to move in.

No, it’s safe to say that nothing in history comes close to what’s being planned for a New Mexico desert: a fully functional — yet empty — city, built solely for the purpose of testing smart technology and unmanned systems.

The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation, or CITE, promises researchers a 28-square-mile “city laboratory,” replete with houses, roads The City Lab portion could test technologies like self-driving cars in a real urban scenario without the risk.

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and shops; plumbing, electricity and communication systems; and, perhaps most importantly, all the legacy infrastructure that threatens to jam up smart technology but that can’t be prematurely ripped from existing cities. In short, a running city, whose only residents will be researchers toiling away in an underground labyrinth of offices and any human volunteers that might be injected into specific tests later.

It should look as if 35,000 people all got up that morning and walked out the door, says Robert Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Global Holdings, the Washington, D.C., research and technology company behind the project.

“It is basically a physical infrastructure that is open to any kind of testing,” Brumley says. “The most obvious kinds are the ones that people see in the news: the UAVs, the unmanned vehicles. But the signifi-

cant portion of technology that’s going to impact people’s lives are ones you don’t read about, the ones that are attaching themselves to homes and offices.”

For now, CITE is designed for five areas of testing: energy systems, including geothermal and solar power, transportation and traffic systems (“not just unmanned vehicles, but a better way of using infrastructure to move traffic around, to limit carbon footprints, to find a parking garage,” says Brumley), telecommunications, operating systems, and security, including homeland defense exercises. Researchers could simulate, for example, the effect of an electromagnetic pulse attack.

Located midway between the towns of Deming and Las Cruces in southern New Mexico, not far from the Mexico and Texas borders, CITE will offer a campus five miles from the test city to house researchers. It will guarantee privacy for any proprietary research.

“We offer something no one else can, and that is scale and scope, with a limited impact to public safety,” Brumley says.

It can be tempting to dismiss the need for such a massive laboratory, particularly at a projected cost of $1 billion over the first 10 years. After all, industry and government is already

Photos: Pegasus Global Holdings.

TESTING,TESTING

investing in test sites for driverless cars and unmanned aircraft systems.

And, as critics have noted, abandoned urban areas already exist. Why not set up a lab in Detroit?

“We were offered Detroit in 2012 and, beyond the simplicity of the offer, the problem was they really don’t have the scale. They don’t have 26 square miles to offer,” Brumley says.

“They do have abandoned homes, but the abandoned homes have people living in them. It’s too simplistic to just say, ‘Go to Detroit.’”

What all these alternatives lack is the chaos of a complete ecosystem.

Google cars might test on some public roads, but with a safety driver aboard. At CITE, “They could take the human completely out,” Brumley says.

“When a car is doing 70 mph on the highway and it has a latency problem, what happens?” he says.

“If you really want to know the future

of autonomous systems, you can do that at CITE.” Perhaps most critically, smart operating systems need a place to test their compatibility with old networks. Ninety to 95 percent of American cities are “dumb,” operating on legacy packages. “That’s the biggest challenge,” he adds. “A lot of cities will say, ‘I bought something that is supposed to work this way, and it didn’t work.’

“If you make the jump from the lab to the consumer, you repeat the mistake that Apple made with the first iPhone,” Brumley says. “It’s not a pleasurable experience if you’re operating it on the wrong network.”

CITE could provide a realistic, faux marketplace, where smart systems can safely break, fail and get fixed before sale.

“It saves consumer dollars, but also builds consumer confidence,” Brumley says.

CITE will be a 28-square-mile uninhabited city, located in New Mexico, that can be used for technology tests.

Although it will be privately financed, CITE will tap into $70 billion per annum the U.S. government spends on related research, via university grants and government labs.

The Obama administration praised the “model city” idea and last year moved the boundary of a proposed national park to accommodate the site.

As of May, Pegasus had finished the development phase” and was raising capital. It hoped to break ground on CITE this year.

“By the time this airs, we fully anticipate we’ll have our initial financing that we’ll announce, and we’ll be commencing our construction,” Brumley says.

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SHOW SCAN

Though it had a new name and a new look, Xponential 2016 marked the 43rd year AUVSI hosted the trade show and educational event — the largest gathering of unmanned systems and robotics professionals in the world.

Hosted in New Orleans, the 2016 event featured new content, like the Startup Showdown contest that saw companies compete for funding from the Commercial Drone Fund, and the Women in Robotics panel, which addressed myriad issues in the unmanned systems field. It also had speakers from government, industry and academia highlight coming changes to the unmanned systems sphere, including a loosening of regulations by the Federal Aviation Administration for college students.

Here is a collection of some of Xponential 2016’s highlights.

By Unmanned Systems Xponential Edition Staff

Photos: Robb Cohen Photography & Video.

Primed for the Future

At the Tuesday General Session, Amazon Prime Air’s Gur Kimchi laid out the company’s concept of how to ensure the increasingly busy international airspace can scale up for widespread drone use, detailing a white paper the company had released the summer prior where it graphed out separate airspace for different types of operations.

“What’s important, though, is we have a model that’s heterogeneous that supports all of these applications,” he says.

To accomplish this, there will need to be a “federated” air traffic control, where information for drones can be relayed across multiple drone controllers to pass on important deconfliction information.

“This is different than what we have today, but it’s more scalable and more robust,” he said, likening it more to how telephone companies built an infrastructure that didn’t need major reworking for new users.

Kimchi discussed the importance

of working with regulatory bodies and advocacy groups.

“The only way this will work is by everybody speaking the same language. We need interoperable protocols, and they need to be global.”

John Chambers, executive chairman of Cisco Systems, talked about another need for scalability — buy in from national governments.

He said he doesn’t currently see this excitement from the national level in the United States. But in countries elsewhere, particularly France — which as of February was the No. 1 startup country in Europe — he’s seen that transition.

“It’s because of commitment of government to change.”

Chambers predicts that with the massive wave of change coming from the internet of things that 40 percent of businesses today will be gone in a decade if they do not adapt.

“When this exponential point occurs, it’s so important that industry is ready,” Chambers said.

Perkins Ponders Changing Military Landscape As a young Army officer, Gen. David G. Perkins received training — and training and training — in the same battlefield scenario.

“The Army I came into was designed to deal with a known problem,” said Perkins, the speaker at Xponential’s Tuesday afternoon general session.

No more. Today’s battlefields are dispersed over large distances while the U.S. forces have shrunk. “And our threats around the world are significantly greater,” said Perkins, who serves as commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. “That’s a very different Army than the one I came into.”

Perkins lightheartedly apologized to the audience. “Our No. 1 priority in the Army — don’t take it personally — is not robotics. It’s leadership development.”

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Women Discuss the Female Side of Robotics

FAA Announces College COA Changes, New Committee Speaking at Xponential on Wednesday, Federal Aviation Administrator Michael Huerta said the agency is setting up an unmanned aircraft advisory committee, similar to the one for NextGen. He also announced that the FAA will no longer require schools to obtain a Section 333 exemption to fly unmanned aircraft for educational purposes, which he said should help spur innovation.

The FAA’s recent experience with the task force for UAS registration and the micro UAS advisory rulemaking committee was so positive that it decided to create the new advisory committee, which has yet to be named but will be chaired by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, because he has “a passion for leveraging technology” and is also a pilot.

It’s intended to be a long-lasting group that “will essentially serve the same purpose as the NextGen advisory committee,” Huerta said.

“One thing we’ve heard from the registration task force and micro UAS ARC is the industry wants more engagement, not less,” Huerta said. “They also want to be able to work on focused problems.”

Earlier the same day, the FAA issued a legal interpretation that said schools that operate unmanned aircraft as part of their coursework will no longer need a Section 333 exemption. That doesn’t apply to things like flying a drone over a football game for fun, but would apply to any educational uses.

“We think this is going to be a big shot in the arm for innovation,” Huerta said.

The same interpretation also says that operators can fly UAS at educational or community-sponsored events, as long as they aren’t compensated for it.

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Women — and some men — showed up for table sessions Wednesday afternoon that offered 13 different topics for discussion, including ones on diversity, promoting STEM for girls, investing and marketing in unmanned systems, and more.

In the “Are robots too male?” portion, Alyssa Simpson, a senior offering manager with IBM Watson, posed the question: What are robots supposed to act like?

Her team finds itself frequently having to correct the executive team for anthropomorphizing Watson.

One attendee made the point that service-oriented robots are often given female voices. Think Apple’s Siri or Amazon Echo’s Alexa, whereas the genius robots, the big-data intelligencers are assigned male voices. Think Atlas from Boston Dynamics.

“He’s highly capable and not an assistant,” she said.

Photos: Robb Cohen Photography & Video.

Legislators, Regulators Seek Industry Involvement, Speakers Say

Industry members should communicate regularly with regulators, legislators and government officials as the unmanned systems community continues to grow, speakers at the final general session at Xponential said Thursday.

“Don’t assume that your member of Congress understands what you do and how important it is,” said Rep. Frank LoBiondo, R-N.J., one member of a panel discussion chaired by AUVSI President and CEO Brian Wynne. “This is one area where we can make a great deal of progress. They really need to hear from constituents. One member can talk to another, … but there’s nothing as powerful as constituents talking to their members of Congress.”

LoBiondo said the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization faces an unclear future, with competing House and Senate versions and the ever present possibility of one or more extensions, such as happened repeatedly with the previous bill.

However, it’s on track to make some good changes for the industry, he said.

“We believe that the test sites have been underutilized, so in the bill we are extending the test sites for six years,” he said.

NASA’s message to industry is to “stay with us” as the agency helps develop an unmanned traffic management system for unmanned aircraft, said John Cavolowsky, director of NASA’s Airspace Systems Program.

That effort now has 200 partners on the effort, which recently held a joint mass demonstration involving multiple UAS flying at all of the test sites, avoiding each other and simulated manned aircraft inserted into the system.

“It continues to grow. We need it to grow,” Cavolowsky said. “Our relevance comes from your engagement, your capability.”

Marke “Hoot” Gibson, senior adviser to the unmanned aircraft systems integration office at the FAA, said the industry will now have a platform to engage with the agency on a regular basis, with the creation of the new UAS advisory committee that Administrator Michael Huerta announced at Xponential on Wednesday.

That panel will be formed soon and should have its first meeting in August, he said. The announcement “was significant in a sea change kind of way,” Gibson said. “The organization is really beginning to

open up to industry and frankly we need to move forward with this.”

Frank Kelley, the relatively new deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for unmanned systems, said attending events such as Xponential is critical for conducting the kind of outreach he needs to do.

“For me and my folks to go out and make the contact with industry that would be necessary, that means going to all 50 states; that means going to our international partners. How many years would that take?” he said. “I can come to a show like this and see what industry is thinking and be engaged with industry.”

Xponential host Miles O’Brien, a longtime science and technology reporter, said the media still doesn’t understand the potential of unmanned systems.

“Not a single airplane has struck a drone, despite all of the coverage that might lead us to think that the skies are filled with drones,” he said, although, as a pilot himself, he has hit a bird with his plane.

“The real problem is birds,” he said, noting that the United States is home to 10 billion of them. “We need to help the media understand the real risks.”

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Lauren McCollum Locks in Member of the Year

The engineers at startup Vanilla Aircraft went long and skinny to reach a 10-plus day endurance time for their winged Vanilla 001, an effort that also netted them the $15,000 prize at AUVSI’s Startup Showdown.

Based on a sail-plane design, the wingspan is a narrow 36 feet; the length is just 14 feet. (The width is proprietary.)

With a speed of 75 knots, the Vanilla 001 can fly 10,000 miles before having to land. Other planes can do this, but they are larger and significantly more expensive.

Judges at the Wednesday event said the impressive endurance was one reason the company won.

In his pitch to the judges, company Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Novara said the company’s three engineers started with the plane’s heavy fuel engine and designed around it. The Vanilla 001 uses about one-sixth of a gallon per hour, or about five percent of what a car on the highway uses. The company is planning for a 100-hour record flight for an internal combustion fuel aircraft.

They’ll use the $15,000 prize money to help cover expenses.

Show host Miles O’Brien asked Novara what the team will do now that they have won, and Novara said, “We are going back to flight test.”

Silicon Valley Wins Chapter of the Year AUVSI’s Silicon Valley Chapter was named Chapter of the Year on Wednesday at the show.

It has been one of AUVSI’s most active chapters in the last year. The chapter supported advocacy efforts at the local level and at the California legislature and also hosted a Capitol Day in Sacramento for members to discuss 28 |

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

with state lawmakers the benefits of unmanned systems technology.

The Silicon Valley Chapter also partnered with NASA on an Unmanned Traffic Management Conference at NASA Ames in July 2015.

The event was regarded as one of the most important of the year, potentially laying the groundwork

for a thriving and safe commercial industry, and drawing an attendance of more than 1,000.

The chapter also supported AUVSI’s initiatives to reach the startup community, a large segment of which is in the Silicon Valley, and pointed out the dangers posed by legislation that would restrict innovation and threaten the state’s rapidly growing unmanned systems business sector.

Photos: Robb Cohen Photography & Video.

Vanilla’s Long-Endurance UAS Takes Startup Showdown Prize

Lauren McCollum, chair of AUVSI’s Advocacy Committee, was named Member of the Year at a Wednesday morning session, for her tireless dedication to the association.

The committee steers public policy engagement with lawmakers, regulators and industry stakeholders. McCollum led the transition of that committee from an ad hoc to a standing committee, underscoring the critical role of advocacy in AUVSI’s strategy.

In 2015, McCollum created a Technical Advisory Subcommittee of top subject matter experts to formulate AUVSI’s response to the FAA’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making on Small UAS. She also recommended the board of directors establish the AUVSI Political Action Committee to support congressional candidates who appreciate the concerns of the unmanned community.

McCollum is director of legislative affairs for intelligence, joint, and science and technology programs at Lockheed Martin.

She personifies AUVSI’s goal to be the undisputed advocate and voice for the unmanned systems industry and this award is in recognition of her significant contributions and achievements, according to the organization.

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VIEWFINDER Eric Hanscom took this shot at the ThaiWest Resort on Koh Sriboya Island with a Phantom 2 Vision+ with the standard DJI lens.

The Thailand resort sits on the coast of the Andaman Sea. Have a great photo you’ve taken with an unmanned system? Send it to Editor Danielle Lucey at dlucey@auvsi.org.

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Clutch T ime 32 |

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

Infrastructure, Regulations and Technology Aligning for More Self-Driving

By Jeffrey N. Ross

In recent years, the automobile industry has worked hard to develop the technology required to progress autonomous vehicles and has worked even harder to get customers on board with the idea of a car that can drive itself. As the technology behind and the acceptance for driverless cars continues to advance, the one factor that remains up in the air is the infrastructure developments that will be necessary to accommodate driverless cars, and this is perhaps the most crucial element for autonomous vehicles to be ready for the real world. From the local municipalities to the state and federal governments, the key piece missing from the autonomous vehicle puzzle is what upgrades need to be made to the infrastructure including physical upgrades in addition to legislative changes.

Just like the infrastructure that was required — and in some cases still is required — for the mainstream use of electric vehicles, there is plenty of work yet to be done for cars to be able to drive without any human intervention. Today’s widespread driver assistance technology allows some functions of autonomous capability, but it looks like we are still years away from seeing a car take us from Point A to Point B all by itself.

To get to that point, the first step is an upgraded infrastructure with improved roadways and technology. In-car cameras play a big part of the driverless systems currently in development, so if lane markings, traffic lights and road signage aren’t improved, cars can have a hard time driving. That is, until more in-depth resources such as vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications become available.

Photo: BMW.

DOT approved a self-parking feature on the 2016 BMW 7 Series. The driver must be standing within six feet of the vehicle for it to work.

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Shreholders have speculated that Tesla’s Model X, with automated doors that sense when a passenger approaches, will one day be used as driverless taxis.

And President Barack Obama recently paved the way for just that thanks to a budget proposal for fiscal year 2017 that would provide nearly $4 billion over 10 years to help bring autonomous vehicles to market faster by setting set up autonomous vehicle pilot programs. Aside from convenience and the added efficiency, the most important aspect of driverless cars is improved safety, since upwards of 32,000 people die on the roadways each year with an estimated 94 percent of those fatalities resulting from an accident that was caused by human error.

Separate from this, the U.S. Department of Transportation has its own Smart City Challenge, which will pledge $40 million to the winning

city — due to be announced in June, after press time — to become the country’s first to incorporate autonomous cars and connected technology into their infrastructure. The Smart City finalists were Pittsburgh, Columbus, Ohio, Austin, Texas, Denver, San Francisco, Portland, and Kansas City, Missouri. The winning city will be announced

by Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.

“The level of excitement and energy the Smart City Challenge has created around the country far exceeded our expectations. After an overwhelming response — 78 applications total — we chose to select seven finalists instead of five because of their outstanding potential to transform the future of urban transportation,” says Foxx. uuu

On a smaller scale, there are other examples of infrastructure improvements being researched

Photos: Tesla Motors.

such as MCity, created by the University of Michigan Mobility Transformation Center. MCity is a 32-acre facility in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that opened July 20, 2015, to provide a closedcourse environment for private and public autonomous vehicle experiments to be held. The facility includes everything from a 1,000-foot straightaway to more challenging urban landscapes, including a roundabout, roads up to four lanes wide and even fake buildings.

Ford Motor Co. is a main sponsor of MCity, and it was the first automaker to test an autonomous vehicle on the course.

“MCity is unique in that it’s compact and set up to do experiments that you prefer to do on a private test track instead of on a public roadway, such as a person not paying attention and running a red light,” says Jim McBride, Ford’s technical leader for the autonomous vehicle program. “This ability to create scenarios that are infrequent and dangerous is one of the biggest advantages of MCity.”

And what will happen to the current landscape of cities once autonomous vehicles hit the road?

The Illinois Institute of Technology won a prize that aims to find out.

According to IIT, “the Nayar Prize is a $1 million-plus prize package established to encourage and challenge Illinois Tech faculty, staff and students to develop breakthrough, innovative projects that will, within three years, produce meaningful results with a societal impact.”

The team behind the Driverless City Project is made up of architects, engineers and designers to explore “social scenarios, technical solutions, infrastructural prototypes and model urban codes for the coevolution of human and nonhuman transportation systems.” uuu

Even if the elements to create a functioning infrastructure were in place today, the next problem then becomes how the government can regulate the use of the technology for safety. One such regulation that has been applied to autonomous vehicles recently is in California, where the state said that a licensed driver must still be behind the wheel of an autonomous car during operation. Not only does this mean the day of a steering wheel-free

automobile is still a ways off, it also ruffled some feathers among companies currently testing the technology.

Tech giant Google, which is building its own fleet of autonomous vehicles, released this statement last year following California’s ruling: “In de-

36 |

veloping vehicles that can take anyone from A to B at the push of a button, we’re hoping to transform mobility for millions of people, whether by reducing the 94 percent of accidents caused by human error or bringing everyday destinations within reach of those

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

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who might otherwise be excluded by their inability to drive a car. Safety is our highest priority and primary motivator as we do this. We’re gravely disappointed that California is already writing a ceiling on the potential for fully self-driving cars to help all of us who live here.”

Just as the University of Michigan is helping companies develop autonomous technologies by using MCity, the university is also seeing how acceptant people are to this technology, and so far, the results are mixed.

A recent study from the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute showed that most people aren’t ready for a fully autonomous vehicle yet, but they still want some sort of partial self-driving ability. This could be a result of the current level of technology that is available today.

While the industry waits for the infrastructure and its consumers to catch up, there continue to be major advancements in terms of autonomous vehicle technology and how consumers are reacting to such technologies. Perhaps one of the most pivotal organizations helping to bring more acceptance to autonomous vehicle technology is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, or IIHS. The IIHS is an independent, nonprofit organization acting as a privatesector version of the government’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and it now requires vehicles be able to stop themselves in order to receive the highest levels of crash ratings — the IIHS Top Safety Pick+. This highly coveted crash rating is essentially forcing automakers to add the technology on all vehicles including smaller, lower-priced cars, which is a segment of cars that historically force customers to choose between affordability and content.

Another technology that is making autonomous technology a reality is

the growing trend toward a selfparking feature. Major automakers such as Nissan and Audi have been developing this technology in recent years, but it is California-based Tesla Motors that has brought this technology to current vehicles. The “summons” feature is available on the Tesla Model S, Tesla Model X and will be available on the upcoming Tesla Model 3, and it allows users to park their car remotely using a smartphone. This technology is, of course, in addition to the self-driving Autopilot mode that Tesla already has on the road. The DOT recently approved BMW to activate the self-parking feature on the 2016 BMW 7 Series sedan. This technology requires the vehicle to be placed in park and turned off with the driver standing within six feet of the vehicle, and then it is able to park itself using the various sensors and cameras.

Developing new technologies in-house is both expensive and time consuming, so many automakers are partnering up with tech companies to get self-driving cars to market faster and easier. The relationship between the automotive and tech world has gotten much closer in recent years as the modern automobile operates more like a smartphone, but one of the most recent examples of this partnership is the recent announcement that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will be working with Google to develop a small fleet of self-driving minivans.

Google has been building autonomous vehicles for test purposes since 2009, but this marks the first time the company has worked directly with a major automaker, which in this case is 100 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans.

There is still no official timeline — be it from the government or individual companies — as to when

self-driving cars will start making their way onto U.S. roadways with consumers behind the wheel rather than test engineers, but a handful of automakers are expecting to have something on the road by 2020. As of right now, all of the key components

(technology, consumer acceptance, regulations and infrastructure) seem to be heading in the right direction, so now they just need to get on the same page to make driverless cars a technology of today rather than a technology of tomorrow. 

JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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CLOUD Airware and State Farm Are Set to Take Both Industries to New Levels

By Barbara Levorson

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UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

Roof inspections are often dangerous, but necessary after a disaster, so insurance companies can move on a claim. Airware’s AIP is aimed to tackle the inspection needs of big companies like State Farm, whom they partnered with in March.

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In March, Airware made headlines announcing its Aerial Information Platform, specifically directed to the needs of Fortune 500 companies.

The San Francisco-based company is the first in its field to offer entire commercial platforms for its drone designs, integrating hardware, software and data storage, according to the company. Airware has procured in excess of $30 million dollars in venture capital funding and revealed its innovative system after four years of development.

“Airware is the only company that offers solutions built on a platform that allows the flexibility to use our technology for a variety of applications,” says Jesse Kallman, director of business development and regulatory affairs for Airware.

This is being put to the test in a major partnership announcement with State Farm to assist their insurance claims adjusters with rooftop inspections.

“We are excited to announce State Farm as our flagship insurance partner to test and deploy commercial drones for catastrophe response, underwriting and rooftop inspection,” says Kallman. “State Farm 40 |

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

and Airware believe drones have the potential to complement what insurance claims associates are currently doing. At this time, we are engaged in a limited deployment, conducting hundreds of test flights to assess how commercial drones can help adjusters with rooftop inspections.” uuu

State Farm is the first insurer to receive approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the commercial use of drones. Airware CEO Jonathan Downey believes drone applications for insurance companies is a good match. Drones not only enhance worker safety for dangerous or inaccessible locations, but the data they provide are timely and consistent, leading to more efficient business processing and decision making.

Assessing rooftops is a significant element of the claims-handling process, whether it is part of infrastructure damage following a weather event or normal business operations.

“In the early days following a catastrophic event, damage to infrastructure can make it difficult to access affected communities,” says Kallman.

“It may be days or weeks before

claims associates are even allowed into the community to begin physical inspections.”

In addition, this is dangerous work, requiring insurance personnel to work at extreme heights, using ropes and harnesses. Airware’s drone technology addresses all of those safety concerns while providing timely information to process claims.

Previously, companies did not possess the technological sophistication in-house to understand the unmanned aircraft system hardware or software required or how to integrate that data to be meaningful within their own systems. They were asking for complete solutions that they can easily adopt into their existing data collection processes.

Photos: Airware.

uuu

Airware’s approach represents a new level of sophistication in drone development. The company’s offerings will include operator software and UAS with onboard sensors, but most significant is the ability to do cloudbased planning, data processing, and analytics and the ability to directly integrate aerial data from drones into their existing business operations.

In addition, Airware is striving to work with a wide variety of aircraft to provide the most appropriate solution for different needs. As an example, rooftop inspections would require the drone to hover overhead to collect images and inspect damage, while a fixed-wing aircraft would be used to inspect miles of cable for a telecommunications application. Airware’s approach to bring field data to final report is unique in the industry.

The software offers autonomous flight planning for missions, which Airware wants to expand to markets like utilities and oil and gas.

Airware’s drone platform is comprised of several components. Its Aerial Information Platform includes the products Flight Core, Ground Control Station Software and a Configuration Manager, all of which provide the hardware and software necessary to provide autonomous flight and flight planning, control, and monitoring and to permit operators with ease of configuration for a wide variety of applications. In addition, Airware’s AIP also contains Airware Cloud software, which features flight operation management, sensor data analysis, information sharing within organizations, and management of approvals and other compliance requirements. Finally, Airware’s App Core applications give a wide JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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State Farm, the first insurance company to gain the right to fly commercially from the FAA, would use drones and software to assess damage after a catastrophe.

range of technological integrations to enable third-party hardware — such as multispectral cameras, thermal sensors and lidar — to be Airwarecompatible, allowing for a variety of applications such as image processing, advanced path planning, vision-based navigation and obstacle avoidance, and real-time decision making.

The scope of the aerial inspection is defined by State Farm’s administrative staff, who automatically create geofence boundaries based on an address or GPS coordinates. They subsequently select which data products are required and the optimal flight plan is generated. This flight plan can be stored and repeated in the future, which permits comparative analysis over time. The flight control software eliminates the risk of human error in operation of the flight.

Airware Cloud contains security features to manage the creation and assignment of jobs, to ensure jobs are only dispatched to specified and approved operators. The onsite operator downloads their assigned jobs and 42 |

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deploys the drone. Airware’s operating system is designed to be operated from a tablet, on which pilots can either pre-program flight paths or change that path during flight.

Airware provides assistance to customers in regulatory approval and compliance with FAA no-fly zones and safety criteria.

“The FAA is expected to publish the small UAS rule within the next few months,” says Kallman, interviewed in May. “This will allow any company to operate commercial drones according to specific criteria.” Currently, drone operators require a sport pilot license.

“But part of the small UAS rule will be the creation of a new UAS pilot license, which will simply require a written knowledge test, similar to that required for renewing a driver’s license,” adds Kallman.

After the flight, data can either be uploaded by the operator to Airware Cloud or processed in the field. The data collected can be used to create 3-D models, digital surface models or orthomosaics, or companies can utilize their

own proprietary tools to customize data analysis. Access to aerial data can be restricted within the organization.

“We’ve been working closely with enterprise customers for years to identify their concerns with challenging issues like data security,” says Kallman.

“We offer role-based permissions to ensure only specifically intended individuals can access aerial data.”

Ultimately, Airware claims this will facilitate and enhance reporting and decision making by utilizing aerial data received in a uniform and timely manner. Companies can collect and analyze information such as property damage, infrastructure assessments, vegetation encroachment or facility modifications. The ability to integrate this aerial data quickly and seamlessly into customers’ existing data analysis and reporting models will revolutionize the industry, the company says.

This remains as one of the most powerful aspects of Airware AIP. The iterative nature of data collection and analysis via stored flight information about individual properties allows

for meaningful comparable data over time and will assist insurers in the claims process.

Data collection is not just limited to claims processing after a damage incident. Airware is also positioning their product for insurers to use drones in the initial underwriting process, and to further extend that service to assist homeowners in preventative home maintenance and risk alert assessments by opting to have regular drone inspections which can identify potential risks.

This gives both the homeowner and the insurer the ability to help to reduce or prevent claims on an ongoing preventative basis. But in the

event of a catastrophic event claim, the insurer can use pre-existing data to assist the homeowner in a rebuild. This data can carry forward with the structure, regardless of change of ownership. uuu

Initially, State Farm indicated they will be conducting private flight tests in Bloomington, Illinois, before taking the drones into real-world scenarios.

“State Farm believes its active exploration of innovative technologies will help them continue to meet the changing needs of their customers and remain the leader in their industry,” says Kallman. “And Airware will

help keep them on the cutting edge of this technology.”

Airware also has its eyes on other industry partnerships.

“In addition to insurance, Airware offers complete enterprise solutions for the telecom, utilities, and oil and gas industries,” says Kallman.

“By building drone solutions on a platform architecture, we’re able to quickly take advantage of technological advances at every layer.”

Airware is also considering an expansion into Europe, and consider themselves well positioned for the explosive growth that the future UAS market will bring. 

JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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Unmanned VTOL X-Plane Advances A Subscale Version of Aurora’s Unmanned LightningStrike is Undergoing Flight Tests for DARPA

By Marc Selinger

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To help pave the way for its new unmanned LightningStrike vertical-takeoff-and-landing experimental airplane, or X-Plane, Aurora Flight Sciences is conducting a series of flight tests of a subscale vehicle demonstrator.

The exact number of flight tests is yet to be determined but will definitely be “more than five,” and they will be completed by the end of 2016, says Ashish Bagai, who manages the VTOL X-Plane program for the DARPA. “The intent is to go through the entire flight spectrum with this aircraft,” including a “conversion

An illustration of Aurora’s LightningStrike, which has gone onto phase two of the DARPA X-Plane project.

uuu

Photos: Aurora Flight Sciences.

flight” that involves tilting the wings and canards to do horizontal flights, he says.

The SVD, a 20 percent scale model of the full-scale LightningStrike demonstrator, flew for the first time on March 29 at an undisclosed U.S. military facility. During the test, the battery-powered, 325-pound aircraft took off vertically, hovered, and then descended and landed on the ground. Nearby, four people seated in a modified large pickup truck remotely operated and monitored the aircraft.

“The flight was very successful,” Bagai says. When the aircraft drifted in the wind, the guidance and control system corrected for it, allowing the aircraft to recover and land “essentially at or very close to the spot where it launched from.”

The first flight was “an important, initial confirmation that both the flight controls and aerodynamic design are aligning with our design predictions,” says Tom Clancy, chief technology officer of Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora.

In Bagai’s assessment, the first test yielded no major surprises. The test identified minor adjustments that must be made, such as reducing the bounce in the landing to “permit a gentler touchdown,” he says. The subscale demonstrator has fixed landing gear with no wheels, unlike the full-sized vehicle’s helicopter-like landing gear, which will be wheeled and retractable.

Flight testing of the full-scale aircraft is due to begin in 2018. The program may move to a larger ground control facility, comparable to a small room, for the full-scale demonstrator.

LightningStrike is intended to take off, hover and land like a helicopter; fly fast like a plane; and have more agility and speed than existing helicopter-plane hybrids. Specific goals include a top sustained flight speed of 300 to 400 knots and a 60 to 75 percent increase in hover efficiency over existing VTOL aircraft.

LightningStrike will have two large rear wings plus two small front wings, or canards, mounted near the aircraft’s nose. Equipped with a total of 24 ducted fans — nine in each wing and three in each canard — the wings and canards will rotate to direct fan thrust as needed, including rearward for forward flight and downward for hovering.

“This is an extremely novel approach,” Bagai says. “It will be very challenging to demonstrate, but it has the potential to move the technology needle the farthest and provide some of the greatest spinoff opportunities for other vertical flight and aviation products.”

Unlike the battery-powered SVD, which Bagai calls the “ugly duckling,” the 12,000-pound LightningStrike will have a single Rolls-Royce JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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AE 1107 engine, the same powerplant used on the twin-engine V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft, the U.S. military’s existing manned helicopter-plane hybrid. “The program can’t afford to do engine development work,” he explains.

LightningStrike derives its flight control system from two Aurora aircraft — the optionally piloted Centaur and the long-endurance unmanned Orion. The ground control station architecture is nearly identical to Centaur’s.

To minimize risk, the VTOL X-Plane will carry no sensors or weapons. Payload room will likely be filled with sand. “If we start burdening the program with nice-tohaves, … I think we would end up derailing ourselves,” Bagai says. uuu

Aurora, which was awarded an $89 million contract for the X-Plane program’s phase two in March, was one of four companies that participated in phase one, which called for developing preliminary designs. Despite Aurora’s selection, the other three — Boeing, Karem Aircraft and Sikorsky Aircraft — indicated they plan to keep pursuing their technologies.

“I had been very encouraging of the performers to think outside the box, to get away from comfort zones,” Bagai says. “All performers did a superb job of answering our call to enable new and innovative designs

The full-sized LightningStrike will use a Rolls-Royce AE 1107 engine, the same used on V-22 Osprey.

and technologies. Had I had enough funding, I would have liked to pursue all of them. We chose one that, in the spirit of DARPA, pursues developing technologies that perhaps are risky but at the same time offer the greatest potential payback.”

Sikorsky, whose Rotor Blown Wing is a tail-sitter with two sideby-side rotors, decided against competing for the phase two contract, because it was focused on ensuring a smooth acquisition by Lockheed Martin, says Chris Van Buiten, vice president of Sikorsky Innovations.

“In that climate,” Van Buiten says.

Sikorsky was “unable to get alignment” on the “investments” needed to finalize a proposal.

But now that the acquisition is completed, Sikorsky is refining its concept and considering building a model for wind-tunnel testing. It is also talking with the military services in hopes of lining up a government customer.

“It was painful for us to no-bid,” Van Buiten says. “It was a very simple

vehicle that met all of the requirements. We remain passionate about the idea. We continue to think it makes a lot of sense.”

Karem, which offered the TR36XP tilt-rotor for X-Plane, has funding to ground-test components through the Army’s Future Vertical Lift research effort.

“Our Army program is able to use all of the design, analysis and hardware developed under the DARPA VTOL X-Plane program,” says Ben Tigner, Karem’s director of advanced systems programs. “The Army and DARPA cooperated during and after the program, and the Army is benefiting from the investment that DARPA made.”

Boeing, whose Phantom Swift has two large lift fans in the fuselage and two smaller ducted fans on the wingtips, said in a statement that highspeed VTOL aircraft are “needed on the battlefield” and that it is “actively engaged with potential customers.”

uuu

Besides the VTOL X-Plane, DARPA is working on several other unmanned aerospace technology efforts.

For example, the Aerial Reconfigurable Embedded System (ARES) program is developing a VTOL aircraft equipped with twin tilting ducted fans and a payload that can be easily reconfigured to perform such missions as cargo resupply, casualty evacuation, troop transport and reconnaissance. Lockheed Martin and Piasecki Aircraft are building a prototype.

Another VTOL aircraft, Tern, is a tail-sitting flying wing. Tern is intended to operate from small-deck ships but provide the long endurance of fixed-wing, runway-using unmanned aircraft such as Gray Eagle or Reaper. Flight testing of a Northrop Grumman-built prototype is due to begin in 2018.

The Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

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aims to add automation, including technology from remotely piloted aircraft, to manned platforms to make them easier to fly. An associated effort has begun flight testing a shoebox-sized system designed to allow unmanned and manned aircraft to automatically detect and avoid nearby aircraft. “What pilot,” DARPA program manager Dan Patt asks, “wouldn’t want to set a box on their dashboard that would provide an additional pair of eyes to alert of potential collisions?”

The Fast Lightweight Autonomy program has equipped a commercial DJI quadcopter drone with sensors

48 |

and software to allow it to quickly navigate around obstacles without human intervention. The FLA aircraft flew around boxes in a Massachusetts warehouse in January 2016. More flight tests, both indoor and outdoor, are scheduled to occur over the next two years.

“If successful, FLA would reduce operator workload and stress and allow humans to focus on higher level supervision of multiple formations of manned and unmanned platforms as part of a single system,” DARPA says.

On the space front, the new Robotic Servicing of Geosynchronous

Satellites program seeks to conduct a satellite-servicing mission “within the next five years.” The servicing vehicle will consist of a DARPA robotic arm mated to a privately developed satellite. At press time, the RSGS program was gearing up to solicit proposals. Meanwhile, the XS-1 program is holding a competition to design, build and flight test a reusable unmanned spaceplane comparable in size to a business jet. A key goal of the XS-1 program, DARPA said, “is to fly 10 times in 10 days to demonstrate ‘aircraft-like’ operability, cost efficiency and reliability.” 

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

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Meet industry leaders, startups, investors and end users all at the forefront of robotics.

The RoboBusiness Conference Shows You How to Benefit From Robotics: • Identify New Business Opportunities & Global Trends • Learn How to Apply Robotics with Success • Build Strategic Relationships with the Industry Elite • Make Informed Technology Purchasing Decisions • Get Exclusive Insights into Cutting-Edge Technology Development • Access Market Forecasts & Application Breakthroughs in Key Markets: w Unmanned Systems | Business | Technology

w Manufacturing & Logistics | Consumer | Service & Healthcare

AUVSI MEMBERS SAVE OVER 50%!

USE CODE RBPAUVSI

The Expo is the hub for hands-on learning with hundreds of robots from around the world.

REGISTER TODAY! robobusiness.com • 800-305-0634

OCTOBER 25-27, 2016 The Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City Arlington, Virginia | USA

AIR. GROUND. MARITIME. THE INDUSTRY’S MOST COMPREHENSIVE MILITARY FOCUSED EVENT OF THE YEAR

Three Days. Three Domains. Countless Opportunities.

This forum brings together industry, defense and government program managers, decision makers and technology experts together for three intensive days of information sharing and networking.

Each day is dedicated to a specific domain — maritime, air and ground — and includes panel discussions, in-depth presentations and networking opportunities.

REGISTER NOW thedefenseshow.org

AUVSI CHAPTERS ATLANTA

GATEWAY

LONE STAR

GREAT LAKES

MISSISSIPPI

CHANNEL ISLANDS

GREAT PLAINS

MOUNTAIN WEST

COASTAL PLAIN

HAMPTON ROADS

NEVADA

D.C. CAPITAL

HEARTLAND

NEW ENGLAND

EMERALD COAST

INDIANA

PATHFINDER

EMPIRE STATE

ISRAEL

RIDGE AND VALLEY

CASCADE

50 |

FLORIDA PENINSULA

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

CHAPTER INFO

U.K. Chapter

Photo: U.K. Chapter.

The AUVSI U.K. Chapter is hosting an event on July 26 at the Business Innovation and Skills Conference Centre, part of the Department of U.K. Trade and Investment, in London that focuses on innovation and export. The four-hour networking event will feature guest speaker retired Maj. Gen. James Poss, formerly the executive director of the stateside Alliance for System Safety of UAS Through Research Excellence (ASSURE) project.

The chapter is focused on educating relevant stakeholders in government, business and academia through networking, roundtables and education events.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN

SAGUARO

SAN DIEGO LINDBERGH

SEAFARER

SILICON VALLEY

Chapter of the Month: U.K. Chapter Chapter President: Jim Edmonson jim@rotron.co.uk

UK

WRIGHT BROTHERS

USA-OK

JOIN AUVSI For information on joining a chapter, contact: Amanda Bernhardt, Chapter Relations Manager | abernhardt@auvsi.org

To visit local chapter websites, scan this QR code with your smart device or go to: www.auvsi.org/MembershipandChapters/Chapters TWIN CITIES

JULY 2016 | UNMANNED SYSTEMS

| 51

FAR OUT Cutting-Edge Unmanned Technology

See Robot Run Researchers Want People to Interact With Robots More Like Pet Owners and Less Like Programmers

Researchers at Washington State University are using animal training techniques to help novices teach robots how to do certain tasks.

In the future, humans will desire to have robots assist them in everyday household chores such as cleaning and cooking.

But unless these humans are computer programmers, to get a robot to carry out the desired tasks, it will have to be given specific instructions that it can understand.

“We want everyone to be able to program, but that’s probably not going to happen,” says Matthew Taylor, Allred Distinguished Professor in the WSU School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “So we needed to provide a way for everyone to train robots — without programming.”

With Bei Peng, a doctoral student in computer science, and collaborators at Brown University and North Carolina State University, Taylor designed a computer program that allows humans to teach a virtual robot that looks like a computerized dog.

People who aren’t computer programmers worked with and trained the robot in WSU’s Intelligent Robot Learning Laboratory.

For the study, researchers varied the speed at which their virtual dog reacted. Just like when a human is teaching a 52 |

UNMANNED SYSTEMS | JULY 2016

new trick to a dog, the lag in the robot’s movements let the human know that the virtual dog was not sure how to behave. The human could then give clearer guidance to help the virtual dog learn better.

“At the beginning, the virtual dog moves slowly. But as it receives more feedback and becomes more confident in what to do, it speeds up,” Peng says.

The user taught the behavior by either reinforcing good behavior or punishing incorrect behavior. The more feedback the virtual dog received from the human, the more adept the robot became at predicting the correct course of action.

The researchers’ algorithm allowed the virtual dog to understand the challenging meaning behind a lack of feedback, called implicit feedback.

“When you’re training a dog, you may withhold a treat when it does something wrong,” Taylor explains. “So no feedback means it did something wrong. On the other hand, when professors are grading tests, they may only mark wrong answers, so no feedback means you did something right.”

The researchers have begun working with physical robots as well and also hope to eventually use the program to help people learn to be more successful as animal trainers.

Photo: iStock.

By Chantelle Polite

The NEW RoboNation is here!

The SeaGlide program is a perfect “next step” for teachers who have done SeaPerch or MATE with their students and are looking for an even more challenging authentic engineering project.

SeaGlide Educator

Stay connected. Join the new RoboNation.

RoboNation is AUVSI Foundation’s robotics community. We have refreshed the look of the RoboNation website to reflect our forward-thinking commitment to serving the robotics community. The website features everything that you love about RoboNation and more!

• Navigate competitions, programs, resources and sponsorship opportunities; • Connect with like minded individuals and share your ideas and love for robotics; • Feature events and activities happening near you; • RoboNation TV; and • Much, much more will occur throughout 2016!

robonation.org

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MANN ED

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EVER PRESENT

IN THE

FASTER,

ANADA AND MEXICO

AIR

DARPA’s SeaACTUV Hunter Gets any Drone Comp Patients Gives Hospice One Last Look

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FIRED UP

TEAMS PREP FOR DARPA ROBOTICS CHALLENGE

DRONE INSPECTIO N GAINS GROUND

d Computing IoT and Clou anned Ag m Coming to Un

Robots Ch ange the of Teleco Face mmuting

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Get 12 issues of Unmanned Systems magazine in print for $69.99 or FREE with AUVSI membership.

ANNED 15 VOLUME 33 NO. 4 | APRIL 20

NM U S Y S TE M S

U N www.unmannedsystemsmagazine.org MANNED D E D S Y E N BIO S TE M S N N N A A NT EM S NM MU MS BOTS U NMANN SYST E SYST E E MS RIDING WAVE 015 2 | FEBRUARY 2 VOLUME 33 NO.

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VOLUME 34 NO. 1 | JAN UARY 2016

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

IN THE 2016 FISCAL YEAR BUDGET

CKLES NASA TARAFFIC T UAS AIR GEMENT MANA

Robots Get Some Animal Inspiration

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K AP TRESIC DRIVE CHEAR T DEVIC

SM NTROL ST TO CO DOWN CO ED SYSTEMS UNMANN

Protecting Road Crews With Driverless Trucks

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VOLUME

ROBOTS LEARN

NEW WAYS TO MOVE

33 NO. 8 |

HEADING SOUTH

LATIN AMER ICA OFFERS OPPO RT

UNITY

Drone Startup Money Keeps Rolling In

Can Drones Overcome Stigmas to Join Firefighters?

TO THE RESCUE

ROBOTS SEEK DISASTER RESPONSE RO LE

ROBO

TICS C H A L LENGE U N M A T N S D Y E N H S N T N E E G A M DUNT EM S FI NNED A MS M SYS N UNMANNED U S Y S TEM S YST E M S HE

UP FOR T

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GET CREATIVE

VOLUME

The REAL r Man OLUME n 3 4 Dolla NO. 2 | SixV Millio

3 | MARCH 2016 VOLUME 34 NO.

34 NO. 4 | APRIL 2 016

ROBOTS DE

FEBRUARY 2016

BLAZE TTLE THE UGVs BA

Unmanned Systems Sc the Arctic out

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UUVS GET PERSONAL

MANNEDD MANNE UN finder LATAS Path ING es TEAM ram Advanc Prog . ARMY

Maritime Domain Gaining Commercial Success

TAKE OFF FOR

ACTION?

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Can Legal Dr Overcome Ill one Film Companies egal Players?

DUUV, GhostSwimmer Make Advances

EUROPEAN VARIETY

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Maritime peti s tions I Wrap AUVSCom Uped Heatnn Largest Unma ow Sh ms Syste in the World

ry Continent’s UAS Indust Stresses Flexibility

DRONES ON THE HUNT R FOR POACHE

ANNED M N U S M E SYST U NMANN U N M A N NED SYST E S Y S TE M S EM MS DANNED UN STE MS 5 0 | OCTOBER 201 VOLUME 33 NO.1

V O L U M E 3 3 N O . 5 | M AY 2015

VOLUME

UAS SHOW IAL GROWTH POTENT ON THE FARM

SPEEDY DELIVERY

EUROPE MAKES HEADWAY WITH

UNMANNED COURIERS

AMERICA The Bureau of Land Management’s Unmanned Mission

O

UUV PREPS FOR STEALTH MISSIONS

DRONE DETECTIVES

LAW ENFORCEMENT EXTEND S ITS REACH WITH UAS

MANAGING CROPS AND LIVESTOCK WITH DRONES

ID ROVDSTHA REAT IN IE

15 1 | JANUARY 20 VOLUME 33 NO.

MAPPING

SHIP TO SHORE

MARITIME OP S INCREASING TEMP

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GUARDS AGAIN PLATFORM HA ST CKING

COMMERCIAL UAS BOOMING IN OCEANIA

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