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AUVSI: Lockheed Martin's seed of an idea
Lockheed Martin has been particularly keen to show off the fruits of one programme that is emerging from its Advanced Technologies Laboratories. Under the direction of principal research scientist, Stephen Jameson, the laboratories have been working on an innovative family of UAS that it has dubbed Samurai.
'The name comes from the Latin 'Samara', which is the name used for maple seeds,' explains Jameson. The name refers to the design of the UAS, which resembles a 'winged seed', or samara, such as the seed of the maple tree.
Just like a maple seed, the Samurai UAS consists of a single wing that rotates around a central hub. However, unlike a seed the small UAS does not rely on gravity but is instead powered by a small motorised propeller on the wing tip. 'With the propeller and the single flap on the wing it allows us to control the motion of the UAS as it spins,' explains Jameson.
'The challenge is the whole thing is rotating,' he continues. 'some things you can do with a conventional UAS you can't do with this – such as looking continuously at a fixed point,' he adds, 'but there are other things that you can do such as scan an entire local using a camera fixed to the rotating hub.'
Much of the challenge for Jameson's team has been in electronically enabling such an arrangement to build up a complete picture. 'We're using a high definition camera,' he adds, 'we're still waiting on some of the technologies to mature, but currently I'd say we're at about technology readiness level five.'
The current proof of concept system has been flying since November 2009. It is a 130g UAS that is around 15 to 18 cm long. However, the company envisions a family of UAS. 'We think we can go down to about an 8cm system, we originally thought we'd be able to get smaller but there are some propulsion challenges there to be resolved,' Jameson states. The design could also easily be scaled up.
The UAS will be able to operate fully autonomously, but Jameson acknowledged there were still a number of challenges ahead. In particular, wind gusts in the urban environment remains a real challenge for such a small system.
By Darren Lake, Denver
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