Autonomous Unmanned Helicopters
We are developing technologies that will allow the safe, reliable, and cost-effective operation of unmanned aircraft for scientific and civilian applications. Unmanned aircraft (UAV, UAS, RPA, drone) are a rapidly growing sector of the aerospace industry.
We maintain a strong focus on the dependability of unmanned aircraft as we address the challenges of pilot-less helicopter operations in unmapped environments, mountainous terrain and turbulent conditions. Operations under such conditions require dependable hardware and software, precise flight control, robust state estimation, obstacle avoidance, autonomous planning, health monitoring, reasoning and decision making, and a high-level interface to allow the mission to be specified by a non-expert operator.
Unmanned helicopter
We have also demonstrated fully autonomous invasive plant surveys in challenging, mountainous rainforest terrrain. The Miconia UAV survey is more effective at detecting miconia than manned helicopter surveys. We are the sole provider of unmanned survey solutions. Our autonomous UAVs also include smaller-scale electric multirotors (quadcopters or drones), medium-scale helicopters, and larger-scale helicopters (3.4 m Yamaha RMAX). Other highly successful technologies we have developed is Hovermap. The Hovermap lidar mapping payload generates 3D point clouds of infrastructure, power lines, construction sites, stock piles, telecom towers and much more.
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