Defense - UAV

Current State

UAVs are pushing the size envelope and becoming ever smaller to support the infantry company in the battlefield. In 2005, the Commando Olympics in Afghanistan demonstrated competing producion Mini UAVs, that were backpackable, hand-launched, and deployed for surveillance, base security, route reconnaissance, mission planning and force protection. According to the U.S. Army, Ravens were flown for approximately 150,000 combat hours in 2007. It is important to note that mini UAVs today are capable of autonomos flight including landing. Missions are programmed with coordinates to go to and tasks to execute.

The Terrain Challenge

A typical mini UAV will be able to sense its ground height using a sonar/radar. This is not sufficient. To be truly autonomos, the UAV needs to be aware of the terrain for the region in order to:

• plan low altitude tactical and fuel efficient routes
• position itself to barely crest the terrain to get line of sight to targets for surveillance and delivery.
• determine the most efficient points along low altitude route to gain line of sight to antennas for transmission of video / data / commands.
• position itself to become a low altitude repeater for radio communication.

But mini UAVs are, almost by definition, cheap and light. This means that they have very limited data storage and processing power. Typical elevation compression and line of sight algorithms would store only small regions, be intensive and slow to process, and require large amounts of data to be loaded from disk into RAM.

What about computing the exact route at the control center and sending a longer command stream to the UAV? Remember that the whole point of the mini UAV is to assist the infantry platoon and company in the light role. Afterall, it is backpackable and hand-launched. Once again, limited computing resources will be available, probably in the form of a handheld computer/radio.

How EarthDetails Will Help

EarthDetails algorithm and code store the Canadian landmass within 8 meter error into less than 4GB and rapidly access it with embedded processors and small RAM. This makes EarthDetails ideal for autonomos UAVs.

Highlights:

EarthDetails renders over 300 thousand rooftops, irregular high density LIDAR elevation data, and high resolution imagery supplied by OSI Geospatial for an entire county in the NorthWest.
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EarthDetails brings 3D to a TomTom GO In-Car GPS.

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EarthDetails renders the US West Coast with Geological Survey data.

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