Flight International

The Morphing Micro Air and Land Vehicle (MMALV) is based on "passive mechanics" of cockroach and bat locomotion.

Three prototypes were built based on studies of the mechanics of thin, undercambered, bat-like wings and abstracted cockroach ground locomotion mechanisms.

One MLV is capable of flying and walking, and successfully transitions between locomotion modalities. An insect-like wing retraction mechanism has also been designed.

Read more here

The 70cm (27.5in)-wingspan, 80cm-long Multiplex Funjet UAV flew for one week from the Norwegian coastguard icebreaker "KV Svalbard" helicopter landing deck in February.

The Funjet was modified with electronics for open-source Paparazzi autopilot software by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen, in partnership with Hildesheim, Germany based-Martin Mueller Engineering, a small UAV company. It is being used to collect enviromental data on temperature, humidity, pressure and wind.

The scientists used a pilot to launch and land the UAV using remote-control, but above 1,600ft and out of visual contact the Funjet had to operate autonomusly.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger was blogging last week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging micro air vehicle (MAV) development.

At the conference’s final plenary session US and Australian military delegates expressed a need for MAVs with night capabilities and all-weather designs that were more rugged.

Having seen what was a deliberately tough mission to push the technical capabilities of the competitors at MAV08, I would think that future additional hurdles of operating at night and in all-weather would be quite some feat, and I suspect is more likely to be seen in MAV 2012 rather than MAV09.

Despite the tough challenge that was MAV08's operational scenario involving MAVs and UGVs operating together to detect mines, terrorists and the location of a hostage, four teams tied for first place in the best mission performance category.

The conference had four other award categories, best UGV design, best rotorcraft, best autonomous MAV performance and best exotic MAV design.

The four winning teams of the best mission performance category were Massachusetts Institute of Technology, France ’s Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC), the University of Arizona and the Martin Mueller Engineering company.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development.

"The Eagle is down, the Eagle is down, over", crackled over the public address system at the Indian air force's drop zone area that is being used for the flight trials for the competition part of this conference. Once again the MAV had crashed after a few seconds or minutes of flight, a scene that was repeated throughout the day.

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development

The conference began yesterday with speeches by keynote speakers on the significance of the surveillance capability that unmanned air vehicles, especially micro air vehicles (MAV), and in future unmanned ground vehicles, would give the soldier, or to use US military speak Warfighter. The programme for this conference can be found here

Most of the speeches given were broad in nature and readers of Flightglobal.com will be aware of the US Army's plans for UAV development. Perhaps the most interesting speech was given by Lieutenent General VJ Sundaram, who spoke on India's work on MAVs over the last ten years. A subject that has not recieved much publicity but one which I will be writing a story about this week.

The press conference that followed brought questions from the non-technical media about the possibility of militants obtaining MAV technology.

The conference's keynote speakers attending the press conference were less concerned that this was an issue - in reality Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers and the Lebano's Hezbollah have both used what could be call MAVs - and focused more on the potential use by emergency services.

Today saw the second day provide more detailed matter with the first seven technical presentations. This was in the afternoon, after a morning that was to have seen flight demonstrations of the conference's competing teams vehicles but which weather brought a halt to.

For my review of the conference so far listen to my podcast here or here
Technical issues mean that these podcasts will no longer be available. The podcast script can be found in the extended entry to this post

Flight technical editor Rob Coppinger is blogging this week from the 1st US-Asian demonstration and assessment of micro aerial vehicles (MAV) and unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) technology, also known as MAV08, the latest in a series of US military sponsored events encouraging MAV development

US fuell cell manufacturer Protonex has put a video on its website homepage showing the handheld launch of an Aerovironment Puma unmanned air vehicle that has been altered to use Protonex's Procore hydrogen fuelled power system

And here is a video of the Pterosoar, another fuel cell powered UAV that achieved a 2h 58min endurance this year

A special kind of scrutiny was applied to the European Aviation Safety Agency last week.

On 27 September the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) imported five of the top executives from EASA, seated them behind a long desk facing a packed hall of industry people, allowed them a few words each to update the audience on current issues they face, and then opened the session for about two hours of questions.

This doesn't normally happen to the senior executives in European agencies. So why EASA? And why did the agency's big five - executive director Patrick Goudou, communications head Daniel Holtgen, quality and standardisation director Francesco Banal, certification director Norbert Lohl and deputy head of flight standards Eric Sivel - agree to undergo this public grilling?

Sea food is well and truly off the menu at EADS this week, following the embarrassing loss of its Barracuda unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) demonstrator to an accident. The 3t air vehicle - named after a long, slender fish - returned to the sea in a so-far unexplained ditching near the end of a weekend test flight from San Javier air base in southern Spain.

Although it can console itself with meat - and weissbier - galore in the beer halls of Munich's Oktoberfest, this is seriously bad news for EADS, which looked to be lagging behind its European rivals in flying advanced unmanned systems even before the Barracuda mishap. Alenia Aeronautica of Italy, BAE Systems of the UK, Dassault of France and Saab of Sweden all held significant bragging rights over the manufacturer, having each flown company-funded UCAV-like demonstrators over the last couple of years: respectively the Sky-X; Raven; Petit Duc; and Filur designs.

Europe's unmanned air vehicle sector is a congested place, with several of the continent's big five military airframers jostling to lead collaborative demonstrations of their combined know-how. The loss of EADS's showpiece aircraft - which was developed under a project worth around €40 million ($50 million) - confirms what we already knew: Dassault is in pole position to conduct such work, as the lead company on Europe's French-led Neuron UCAV project. BAE also appears well placed to lead development work in the UK, which seems set to go it alone.

Pardon the pun, but there was something a bit fishy about the Barracuda programme's achievements to date. EADS refused to comment on the effort for many months, before releasing sketchy details of an initial flight test campaign - also conducted from San Javier - just before April's Berlin air show, where the design was formally unveiled. Sources from rival manufacturers suggested that something had not gone to plan during this process, as the UCAV flew just once for 20min, but EADS played this down, attributing the lone sortie to "inclement weather".

The new Barracuda campaign - which I reported on for this week's print edition of Flight International from EADS Military Air Systems' technology forum in Munich on 19-20 September - also sounded to be of limited ambition, with the company saying that only two or three flights were planned, to expand the air vehicle's flight envelope through changes to its altitude and speed. The accident is believed to have happened during the first of these sorties, on 23 September, destroying EADS's lone Barracuda, which was manufactured around two years ago.

As ever, it's too early to speculate on what might have happened, but an EADS official said last week that windtunnel tests of the so-called Spiral 0 Barracuda proved that the design was "absolutely stable". Powered by a Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D-5C turbofan engine, the air vehicle was controlled without using a joystick on the ground, but by around 10 high-level commands, such as start, go around, and land. Navigation was provided using EGNOS and GPS satellites, with the air vehicle also equipped with a laser altimeter; clever stuff all round, but equally, lots to go wrong.

Regardless of the cause of the Barracuda's loss, perhaps EADS should steer clear of marine life next time it decides to name one of its projects: let's not forget that its proposed Mako advanced jet trainer (named after a stealthy species of shark) has also vanished silently into the depths over the last couple of years, following a lukewarm market response. Luckily for the company, as military operators are maybe 15 years away from fielding operational UCAVs, perhaps it has time to recover from this mishap.

Every now and then in aerospace research the man in his workshop can actually come up with something that the technology behemoths of Boeing and EADS and Lockheed Martin cannot.

Whether it’s bureaucratic cultural prejudice against radical ideas and the ‘play it safe’ thinking that goes along with that, I don’t know.

But the almost-lone inventor can still provide something intriguing despite the vast difference in resources.

It was with this expectation that I found myself standing outside 225A Star Road in Peterborough (pronounced "Peter-bra"), a UK city 2h north of London by train, on a chilly day earlier this month.

Robots are often used in the media to instil fear with Frankenstein like stories of the scientist and corporation having gone to far with a humanoid machine destroying all before it. But on today's battlefield, and for this US Army sponsored event, and for the war of tomorrow the robots will, apparently, look more like model planes.

On a wind swept car park in the Bavarian town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, once home to the 1936 winter Olympics, 16 teams battled it out for a top prize that was the opportunity to bid for a $100,000 research contract. Unsurprisingly a lot of the teams were universities.

From video goggles to video screens the operators, sometimes using remote control, others using autopilot software, guided their flying machines into the target area by hand or a waypoint, care of a click of the PC mouse. The mission was to loiter at an altitude, at which you should not be heard, and transmit back images of the target zone, and wait for the "terrorist" to wander in, "satchel explosive" under their arm. The micro air vehicles (MAV) had to operate for 30 minutes and the terrorist be clearly seen in the video picture.

Not as easy as you'd think. A number of the MAVs had battery problems, others couldn't cope with the wind gusts, others crashed due to pilot error. But every team was given ample opportunity to fly and spot the enemy. Autonomous flight was of key interest to the organisers and four teams all used the same open source software, Paparazzi. In fact they had collaborated on code but the experts were the French national civilian aviation school team. Ecole Nationale l'Aviation Civile (ENAC) developed Paparazzi from another open source software package, Micropilot, which is for helicopters. The ENAC team proved their expertise by having not one fixed wing MAV loiter autonomously around the target zone but two.

Craig Hoyle / ParcAberporth

Although the US Air Force has got into difficulties with its RQ-4A Global Hawks, the incident that sparked the trouble is actually quite comforting.

One of our reporters listened in as military controllers warned nearby aircraft that a Global Hawk was returning Edwards AFB after an engine failure. It's the sort of situation that, if it had been a manned aircraft, would have had everyone for miles around fearing for the safety of the crew, other aircraft, and even people on the ground.

But the outcome was entirely benign, with the aircraft following a pre-planned pattern to glide back to base. That's impressive: up close the Global Hawk is a fair-sized aeroplane, powered by a serious jet engine, and generally to be treated with considerable respect. Such a smooth outcome to what was a challenging situation bodes well for the unmanned aviation community, especially to the parts of it with aspirations to operate in civil airspace.

Systems will malfunction on these aircraft just as they do on manned types, but, as with manned types, it's what you do next that counts.

As far as unmanned aviation has come in the last decade, it remains the rare niche aviation market that can't agree on what to call its signature product.

As an acronym, do we call them a UAV, UA or UAS? As a word, should we describe them as unmanned, uninhabited or unpiloted?

Never one to join the crowd, the US Air Force has coined its own new term: Remotely Operated Aircraft (ROA, anyone? Frankly, we think that's already DOA, or should be).

Now, the US Department of Defense is proposing to settle this nomenclature madness once and for all. Here is DOD's new and long-awaited Unmanned Aircraft Systems Roadmap. Among other things, it decrees the term UAV is passé.

Henceforth, the DOD will recognize two terms: an unmanned aircraft (UA) and an unmanned aircraft system (UAS). The UA is to be used when referring to the flying component of a UAS, which refers to a ground station linked with one or more UAs.

"This change in terminology more clearly emphasizes that the aircraft is only one component of the system, and is in line with the Federal Aviation Administration's decision to treat 'UAVs' as aircraft for regulatory purposes," a footnote reads.

There may be some logic to this. It reflects the fact that unmanned flight requires more than just an aircraft to work - and, thus, for governments to regulate. And it substitutes the smoother word, "aircraft", for the clunky and possibly anachronistic term,"air vehicle." (Who came up with "unmanned air vehicle" anyway? Any theories?)

But there is a catch. Even if the aim is to clarify, it doesn't do you any favours if few others in the English-speaking world know the difference between a UAS and a UA. Or, for that matter, a UAS and a UAV.

It is something we're thinking about among our editorial team. Flight International uses the term UAV, which has its flaws but at least is commonly understood. This may have to be discarded at some point, but we are asking two questions: when? and with what?