Development of the Brican Td100 Small Uas and Payload Trials

Abstract

Commission VI, WG VI/4KEY WORDS: UAS, BLOS, Multifuel, DSLR, Infrared, Georeferencing, Forest-fire, Wild-Life ABSTRACT:The Brican TD100 is a high performance, small UAS designed and made in Brampton Ontario Canada. The concept was defined in late 2009 and it is designed for a maximum weight of 25 kg which is now the accepted cut-off defining small civil UASs. A very clean tractor propeller layout is used with a lightweight composite structure and a high aspect ratio wing to obtain good range and endurance. The design features and performance of the initial electrically powered version are discussed and progress with developing a multifuel engine version is described. The system includes features enabling operation beyond line of sight (BLOS) and the proving missions are described. The vehicle has been used for aerial photography and low cost mapping using a professional grade Nikon DSLR camera. For forest fire research a FLIR A65 IR camera was used, while for georeferenced mapping a new Applanix AP20 system was calibrated with the Nikon camera. The sorties to be described include forest fire research, wildlife photography of bowhead whales in the Arctic and surveys of endangered caribou in a remote area of Labrador, with all these applications including the DSLR camera.

A Survey of Practical Design Considerations of Optical Imaging Stabilization Systems for Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

“…With the fast development of new sensors and methods to improve the accuracy and decrease the cost of acquiring these meta data, together with a lack of off-the-shelf customizable imaging systems to test the latest technology with, many have created their own payloads. Plenty of research exists which present custom-made optical imaging systems for specific missions [1,2,3,4,5]. The research shows proofs of concept, which can be very valuable since the image acquisition process is highly complex—experimental data from multiple systems can show how design parameters affect the data quality in general, or can be used to replicate the system for a similar mission.…”