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MHT Emerging Technologies Forum: Robotics
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A local R&D engineering firm and a Georgia university are teaming up to help unmanned, flying military robots relaunch quicker and more efficiently by using a flying net to catch and power up the autonomous vehicles.
Boston Engineering Corp. has landed a federal grant to develop a robotic platform to catch, service, refuel and relaunch unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. The Waltham engineering services company and researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology plan to design the “Unmanned Recovery, Service and Launch Automation” system (URSALA) under the $70,000 Phase 1 Small Business Technology Transfer grant, according to Boston Engineering COO Mark Smithers.
The system would be used for midsize, wheel-less UAVs, such as the Raytheon Co. Killer Bee, or the InSitu Inc. Scan Eagle, rather than larger platforms such as General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc.’s Predator.
But Smithers said the system will feature an elastic net that would deposit the UAV onto a sled. The kinetic energy from the impact of the UAV into the net would partially power the sled, which would move it to a station nearby where a robotic arm would inspect, service, refuel and reposition the UAV for launch.
Flying robots have been popping up more and more lately. Locally, iRobot co-founder Helen Greiner recently revealed that her startup, The Droid Works, is developing UAVs for first responders. Last week, Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. showed off its unmanned vertical-takeoff aircraft, the Excalibur. And fuel cell technology maker Protonex Technology Corp. is developing fuel cell systems for small, unmanned aerial vehicles for the Navy.
Nationally, California-based AeroVironment Inc. recently unveiled a model for a hummingbird-mimicking “nano-UAV” funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA has also contracted the Boeing Co. to develop a combat plane-scale UAV, which is planned to be tested in 2010.
“People are realizing the aerial technology is reliable,” Smithers said.
Don Quenneville, director of the regional trade group Defense Technology Initiative, and an Air Force pilot himself for 30 years, said UAVs represent the future. They allow humans to be removed from harm’s way, he said.
And in May the Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance said he could see UAVs used as fighter jets down the road.
Quenneville said drones can be flown much longer than jets: Rather than sending a jet out while another returns, a pilot at a remote location could merely take his colleague’s place at a control station while the drone remains in flight.
“It provides persistence,” Quenneville said.
Boston Engineering and Georgia Tech won’t finalize their design until after meeting with an official in charge of the program next month at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International symposium in Washington.
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