Date: 18 July, 2008
A team, led by a number of recently qualified engineers and scientists from QinetiQ’s Cortex early career training scheme, has entered an innovative and versatile unmanned air vehicle (UAV) for the MOD’s Grand Challenge – a competition designed to encourage younger engineers and scientists to champion the development of a system with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, monitor and report a comprehensive range of military threats in an urban environment.
QinetiQ’s Grand Challenge entry can take off vertically – so the operator is not exposed - and then transition into conventional flight to provide range and operational duration. This design means that, in addition to being used as a ‘conventional’ UAV, it can go into hover mode or be landed to function as an unattended ground sensor. The sensor and imaging payload can be pre configured using a number of existing technologies to meet user requirements.
It can remain on station and then take off again (unattended) and either be recovered back to base or continue to perform as a UAV or a ground sensor at another location. ”Powered by twin electric motors, the airframe is manoeuvrable, stable, efficient, robust and durable. Designed using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) technology, it uses tried, tested and secure communications links.
A low-cost solution, it is also light weight, easily scaleable from the current wingspan of about 1.5m, highly portable, and can be operated for long durations,” QinetiQ explained.
The system is currently undergoing flight testing and the final demonstration trials are at Copehill Down on Salisbury Plain during August. The trials are designed to validate each entry’s ability to detect and identify real and potential threats and relay this information back to the operator to enable executive decisions to be made to mitigate them.
The Grand Challenge called for a system with a high degree of autonomy that can detect, identify, monitor and report a comprehensive range of military threats in an urban environment to be created.
Open to the whole UK science and technology base, large and small companies, research laboratories and academic science faculties, around 10 entries should have made it through to the final stage of the competition and the MOD is keen to see the best solutions developed quickly into equipment for the UK Armed Forces.