Long Range Aerial Drones

In the past years, aerial drones have been making significant progress in performing tasks that would normally be considered too dangerous or precise for a person to execute. With recent improvements in technology, aerial drones are becoming more autonomous than ever. From military and safety applications to commercial delivery systems and recreational use, drone automation is changing the way we look at the future of common everyday services. The purpose of this project is to examine current drone automation techniques, investigate how they work, and design a do-it-yourself solution with a small budget using only off-the-shelf components

Service Section Design of the EDEN ISS Project

The international EDEN ISS project aims to investigate and validate techniques for plant cultivation in future bioregenerative life support systems. To this end the EDEN ISS project partners aim to design and build the Mobile Test Facility, which consists of two modified 20 foot shipping containers. One of these shipping containers is designated the Service Section and houses the bulk of the subsystem components, such as the Air Management System and Nutrient Delivery System, as well as a rack-sized plant cultivation system, which uses a standard International Space Station payload form factor. The subsystems within the Service Section ensure that the approximately 12.5 m² of cultivation area in the second container, the Future Exploration Greenhouse, have the proper environmental conditions, nutrients and illumination for optimal crop growth. The EDEN ISS project concluded its main design phase with a Critical Design Review in March 2016, thereafter proceeded into the hardware development and procurement phase of the project. This paper describes the final design of the Service Section at the start of the assembly, integration and testing phase, which will run until the complete Mobile Test Facility is shipped to Antarctica, where it arrives in December 2017, for a 12 month space analogue mission

A Real-Time Video-Streaming System for Monitoring Demining

The most deployed detection technology for landmine clearance is the metal detector (MD).1 Other detection technologies exist, such as ground penetrating radar,2 chemical sensors,3 biological sensors,4 and infrared imaging,5 to name a few. However, despite their widespread use, MDs suffer from high false-alarm (FA) rates since they cannot differentiate between the metal components in a landmine and harmless metal clutter. Deminers using MDs usually rely on their personal experience to differentiate between the sounds emitted by the MD when scanning a landmine or an item of clutter. Usually, they continue to excavate on a large number of occasions and end up finding a harmless piece of metal. For each found single landmine, it is estimated that a hundred to a thousand false positives are encountered.6 The high FA rate substantially slows the demining process and increases costs. This delays the recovery of contaminated land and the resumption of everyday activities around the affected areas

2011 Exhibitors

Listings and Descriptions of 2011 Small Satellite Conference Exhibitor

Kestrel Eye Block II

Kestrel Eye (KE) is a microsatellite technology demonstrator for the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) / Army Forces Strategic Command (ARSTRAT) developed by Quantum Research International, Inc. and Adcole Maryland Aerospace (AMA). Kestrel Eye weighs approximately 50 kg and provides electro-optical images with tactically useful resolution as requested by the warfighters in theater. The warfighters in theater will task and receive data from the satellite during the same pass overhead. The data can be downlinked directly to provide rapid situational awareness to our Army Brigade Combat Teams in theater without the need for continental United States relays. By using a small satellite, the required logistics footprint in the field is reduced as compared to an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS). In addition, developing a constellation of small satellites increases survivability and provides graceful degradation as no individual satellite is critical to the functioning of the constellation. Once Kestrel Eye reaches production, it will have a relatively low cost at approximately $2 million per spacecraft and will have an operational life of greater than one year in low earth orbit. With its low cost, large numbers of satellites can be procured enabling the system to be dedicated to the tactical warfighter. Kestrel Eye was successfully deployed from the International Space Station on 24 October 2017. The performance of this satellite is now undergoing investigation to validate the specifications of the satellite are met. The checkout investigation is being performed jointly by a ground station in Huntsville, AL operated by USASMDC/ARSTRAT and one in Hawaii operated by United States Pacific Command (USPACOM). At the conclusion of those investigations, the satellite will undergo a series of exercise experiments to evaluate if similar satellites could support critical operations. If the experiments are successful, it is expected satellites of similar capability can be procured/operated at a low cost. This paper provides the background and development of Kestrel Eye as well as a current status of the orbital mission

Product Development Process for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

The DoD has recognized the need for persistent Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) over the last two decades. Recent developments with commercial drones have changed the market structure; there is now a thriving and extensive market base for drone based remote sensing. This research provides system engineering methods to support the DoD use of this burgeoning market to meet operational ISR needs. The three contributions of this research are: a process to support Small Unmanned Aerial Systems (SUAS) design, tools to support the design process, and tools to support risk assessment and reduction for both design and operations. The process and tools are presented via an exemplar design for an ISR SUAS mission. The exemplar design flows from user needs through to an allocated baseline with an assessment of system reliability based on a compilation of commercial component reliability and failure modes

Design and evaluation of a self-configuring wireless mesh network architecture

Wireless network connectivity plays an increasingly important role in supporting our everyday private and professional lives. For over three decades, self-organizing wireless multi-hop ad-hoc networks have been investigated as a decentralized replacement for the traditional forms of wireless networks that rely on a wired infrastructure. However, despite the tremendous efforts of the international wireless research community and widespread availability of devices that are able to support these networks, wireless ad-hoc networks are hardly ever used. In this work, the reasons behind this discrepancy are investigated. It is found that several basic theoretical assumptions on ad-hoc networks prove to be wrong when solutions are deployed in reality, and that several basic functionalities are still missing. It is argued that a hierarchical wireless mesh network architecture, in which specialized, multi-interfaced mesh nodes form a reliable multi-hop wireless backbone for the less capable end-user clients is an essential step in bringing the ad-hoc networking concept one step closer to reality. Therefore, in a second part of this work, algorithms increasing the reliability and supporting the deployment and management of these wireless mesh networks are developed, implemented and evaluated, while keeping the observed limitations and practical considerations in mind. Furthermore, the feasibility of the algorithms is verified by experiment. The performance analysis of these protocols and the ability to deploy the developed algorithms on current generation off-the-shelf hardware indicates the successfulness of the followed research approach, which combines theoretical considerations with practical implementations and observations. However, it was found that there are also many pitfalls to using real-life implementation as a research technique. Therefore, in the last part of this work, a methodology for wireless network research using real-life implementation is developed, allowing researchers to generate more reliable protocols and performance analysis results with less effort

Control system integration

This lecture begins with a definition of an accelerator control system, and then reviews the control system architectures that have been deployed at the larger accelerator facilities. This discussion naturally leads to identification of the major subsystems and their interfaces. We shall explore general strategies for integrating intelligent devices and signal processing subsystems based on gate arrays and programmable DSPs. The following topics will also be covered: physical packaging; timing and synchronization; local and global communication technologies; interfacing to machine protection systems; remote debugging; configuration management and source code control; and integration of commercial software tools. Several practical realizations will be presented