12 Nov 14. China’s CASIC Reveals New Stealthy WJ-500 UAV. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp. has unveiled a new WJ-series UAV. The angular, stealthy design of the multipurpose, subsonic WJ-500, on display this week at Airshow China, gives it a low radar signature allowing for ‘great defense penetration’ and provides for a variety of missions, including simulating the characteristics of cruise missiles and aircraft, according to the company. As a combat platform it can handle a variety of payloads, including photoelectric, reconnaissance and synthetic aperture packages. Missions include reconnaissance, targeting and damage assessment. Airshow China, known officially as the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition, is being held Nov. 11-16 in Zhuhai in the southern province of Guangdong near Hong Kong. (Source: Defense News)
12 Nov 14. China’s NORINCO Gets Into UAV Biz. China North Industries Corp. (NORINCO), better known for building tanks and infantry vehicles, has developed an unmanned helicopter. The company revealed its Sharp Eyes III UAV this week at Airshow China in Zhuhai. The multitask military UAV can be equipped with a charge-coupled device camera, infrared laser, electro-optical equipment, targeting sensors and illumination for semi-active laser-guided bombs. Missions include reconnaissance, targeting, damage assessment and battlefield situational awareness. Airshow China, which is being held Nov. 11-16 at Zhuhai in the southern province of Guangdong near Hong Kong, is known officially as the 10th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition. (Source: Defense News)
06 Nov 14. Army lab developing small drone with insect-like vision. Soldiers have worked together with robots—whether in the form of, say, bomb-hunting ground vehicles or video-streaming air vehicles—for years. But it’s a labor-intensive process for the soldier operating the vehicle via a controller or monitor. The Army Research Laboratory is trying to change that equation, with a palm-sized, prototype UAV that, using insect-inspired visual sensing, is designed to navigate a 3D space such as a building on its own while relaying tactical awareness back to a soldier. The quad-copter drone, the result of an ARL collaboration with academia and industry, is expected to be tested at the manned and unmanned teaming, or MUM-T, exercise at the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Ga., according to an ARL release. Researchers say they aren’t expecting miracles—this UAV represents a technological leap—but are hoping to put the UAV to use with soldiers and gather feedback on improving g autonomous systems. The prototype is capable of wide-field vision and high update rate—both present in insect vision—and researchers hope to combine those features with 3D mapping and motion estimation to allow it to operate autonomously. Whether it works as intended or not, researchers expect to learn a lot from the tests. “It is exciting,” Brendan Byrne, who manages the platform from the perspective of Computational and Information Sciences, said in the release. “On one hand, the technology offers the most cutting edge possibilities. On the other hand, the lack of maturity makes it the most prone to failure.” The small UAV is the work of the Micro-Autonomous Systems Technology Collaborative Technology Alliance, or MAST CTA, part of ARL’s robotics enterprise. The alliance includes Carnegie Mellon University, the primary collaborator on the project, along with BAE Systems (which actually leads the alliance), NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania and 13 other universities. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
12 Nov 14. Iranian RQ-170 flight likely to have featured sub-scale model. A reported first flight by Iran of a reverse-engineered copy of the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) appears to have featured a sub-scale model rathe