Small military drones are used for more than just short-range reconnaissance. draper Develop chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) elemental detection capabilities to enable military units to proactively deploy sUAVs to reconnoiter locations and identify hazards without endangering personnel.
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Previously, detection of CBRN elements was performed using hand-held or vehicle-mounted sensors, explains Draper.
“Customers are asking if sUAVs can sniff out these CBRN hazards instead of humans. Does it have to be smart enough? When an sUAV encounters a building or obstacle, can it safely fly in and around it? These are just some of the questions our team is considering.” said Draper Program Manager Wong Kim.
Joint Program Secretariat for Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Defense (JPO-CBRND) funded a Draper program called CSIRP: CBRN Sensor Integration on Robotics Platform. “The team will explore customer needs through site observations, sensor efficiency and resolution, flight speed, altitude, duration, autonomous operations, sensor-driven mapping, networked commands, and enhanced situational awareness with shared interactive digital maps. We focused on requirements such as,” he said. press release.
In addition to searching, detecting, and mapping CBRN hazards, soldiers also need fully autonomous flight, including obstacle avoidance, even in potentially GPS-less environments. “Distributed soldiers also want a secure, networked way to share information mapped to their environment,” the release notes.
New features developed by Draper CSIRP It utilizes multiple environmental inputs along with sensor fusion algorithms that can synthesize data from devices such as GPS, LiDAR, inertial measurement units, magnetometers, and cameras. All of the fused information is designed using new algorithms developed for CSIRP to provide robust, autonomous operation that enables sUAVs to detect and avoid obstacles.
“Mobile military technologies like SUAVs can both add strength and protect it,” Kim said. “If technology like sUAVs could be introduced to remotely detect suspected CBRN hazards and operate independently without exposing soldiers to unnecessary harm, it would be an advance in fighter systems that would It’s important to Draper.”
“Draper has designed its autonomy framework and sensor-driven mapping algorithms to be a scalable, modular and resilient mobility platform that is vehicle and processing system agnostic,” said Sensors and Delivery at Draper. Associate Director Julius Rose said. “As new capabilities and vehicles are developed, autonomous systems must be easily adaptable to support different types of missions across domains such as air, ground, and sea. Development must be efficient, reusable and agile at the pace of your needs.”
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Miriam McNabb, editor-in-chief of DRONELIFE and CEO of professional drone services marketplace JobForDrones, is a keen observer of the emerging drone industry and drone regulatory environment. Miriam is an international speaker and industry recognized figure, with over 3,000 articles focused on the commercial drone space. Miriam has a degree from the University of Chicago and he has over 20 years of experience in high tech sales and marketing new technologies.
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