UAF unmanned aircraft program soars to new heights
Published Monday, November 10, 2008
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FAIRBANKS — Meet Martha.
She is the darling of the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ unmanned aircraft program at Poker Flat Research Range.
She can fly up to 20 hours at a time, is equipped with video and camera equipment powerful enough to identify a person from a mile away but remains lightweight and compact enough to fit in a large suitcase.
She cost the university $100,000 and researchers are trying to prove she is worth every penny — and more — by finding uses for her beyond the most common use of unmanned aircraft — military reconnaissance.
Next spring, the aircraft will be used to help scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration count, capture and study seals in the Bering Sea. The plane will take high-resolution photographs of seals on the pack ice and direct seal-hunting biologists to their prey so the seals can be fitted with radio transmitters.
In the future, Martha may be used to help wildlife biologists count moose and caribou or assist firefighters in mapping and fighting wildfires. The possibilities are as big as Alaska, says Greg Walker, manager of the university’s unmanned aircraft program.
“We’re trying to find civil and commercial applications for the technology,” said Walker, 44, who has spent the past decade working at Poker Flat, the university’s rocket range nestled in the Chatanika River valley 30 miles north of Fairbanks. “It’s already been proved in the defense world; we’re trying to exploit it in civil world.”
The plan to use Martha to study ice seals in the Bering Sea next spring took another step forward last month when the NOAA conducted three successful flights of unmanned aircraft from a NOAA ship in Puget Sound, part of a $57,000 contract UAF has with the federal agency.
The aircraft, officially called the ScanEagle, was piloted by two Walker and fellow Poker Flat researcher Don Hampton, who controlled the plane by computer aboard the Oscar Dyson, a 200-foot fisheries survey vessel. The flights were conducted in restricted airspace on Oct. 15-16.
“Their goal was three flights, and we pulled off three flights in two days,” said Walker.
While Martha was used on only one of the three flights — an identical aircraft belonging to Boeing was used for the other two — it was the first time Walker and Hampton had flown Martha off a ship. They have been testing the aircraft at Poker Flat and over a bombing range on Fort Wainwright for the past two years.
“Basically, it was an experiment to verify we had our equipment together and we knew how to do it,” Walker said. “It was a validation of their process and our operations and hardware.”
“To be able to fly a fixed-wing aircraft off a ship is kind of unique,” he said. “It was pretty cool.”
It’s an albatross
Martha’s body measurements are not eye-popping, though the aircraft’s bright, orange wings definitely catch your eye, which is the whole point.
She has a 10-foot wing span and weighs 40 pounds when fully loaded, which includes fuel and payload — a fancy term for the photographic equipment the aircraft carries.
“There are radio-controlled planes that are bigger than this,” Hampton said at Poker Flat on Wednesday.
The aircraft has a 28cc engine and runs on a 50 to 1 mixture of gas and oil similar to a chainsaw. In fact, the manufacturer recommends using synthetic Stihl chainsaw oil, Walker said.
Martha can fly for up to 20 hours on just 2 gallons of fuel at speeds ranging from 45 to 75 mph.
“It looks kind of like an albatross in flight,” Walker said. “It has no tail.”
The aircraft is made from carbon fiber and, despite its fragile appearance, “is actually pretty tough,” Hampton said.
Launch and recovery
To fly off a ship, the aircraft is launched from the deck by a pneumatic catapult. It “lands” by flying into a vertical quarter-inch rope that extends over the water about 20 feet from the ship.
The rope, which has giant bungee cords on each end, is attached to the ship’s crane and a boom in the water. When the wing of the plane hits the rope, the bungee cords stretch to lessen the impact and a clip at the end of either wing locks onto the rope, snagging the aircraft from midair at 45-50 mph.
“It will slide down the wing and get snagged on one of the hooks,” Walker said of the rope.
The launch is actually tougher on the plane than the recovery, Walker said. The catapult used to launch the aircraft produces a G-force of 12 Gs.
“That’s 50 to 55 mph in 14 feet, and that happens in a third of a second,” Walker said. “During the recovery, the plane is going slower, and it takes about a full second.”
The aircraft is made of carbon fiber and “is actually pretty tough,” Hampton said, despite its somewhat fragile appearance.
The aircraft can be launched in 30 mph winds and recovered in 40 mph winds, “but we don’t want to do that unless we have to,” Walker said.
One of the main objectives during the test flights was to coordinate the recovery process and figure out what kind of effect wind speed and direction, as well as the boat’s speed, has on the plane during the recovery.
The only hiccups during the mission came on Martha’s first and only flight. One of the clips on the end of the wings cracked when it hit the rope.
“It was a swappable part, so we just swapped it out,” he said.
While Walker and Hampton were the pilots of the unmanned aircraft, that title is really a misnomer, Walker said.
“I don’t fly the aircraft; I direct the aircraft as to what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “It’s completely flown through computer interface.”
Or as Hampton put it, “It’s basically like a video game. You’ve got a map of the area you’re working with, and you use that to figure out where you want to go. It’s flying on autopilot all the time.”
UAF bought the aircraft in 2006 for $100,000 from Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing. Both Hampton and Walker took a seven-week training course to learn how to fly Martha.
The hardest part about flying Martha is getting the approved airspace from the Federal Aviation Administration to do so, even when that airspace is as quiet as the Bering Sea, said Walker.
“We have to go through the same policies flying over the Bering Sea as if we were flying over Austin, Texas,” he said. “It’s just as complicated for me to fly this over Anchorage as it is the Bering Sea to the FAA.”
Seal of approval
Biologists with NOAA are hoping Martha will help them get a better handle on the number and distribution of ribbon, bearded, spotted and ringed seals in the Bering Sea.
“We are particularly interested in using this new technology in the Arctic, where we urgently need better data in very remote locations,” said Robin Angliss, deputy director of NOAA’s National Marine Mammal Laboratory.
With the effects of global warming becoming more evident, seals are in much the same boat as polar bears, which were recently listed as “threatened” by the Department of the Interior due to their shrinking habitat.
All four species of seals are being considered for endangered status under the Endangered Species Act, and NOAA is reviewing the status of each of those species, said biologist Josh London, the project’s chief scientist at NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center. The decision whether to list ribbon seals as endangered is scheduled for December, while a decision about the other seals has been scheduled for May.
Up until now, the agency has flown surveys using helicopters from Coast Guard icebreakers, which is expensive, dangerous and limited.
“You’re not going to put a helicopter up and fly 10 hours a day — we can,” Walker said. “We can get a lot more coverage for less money.”
The camera equipment carried on the plane is sophisticated enough to photograph and identify seals from a mile away, Walker said.
London agreed that Martha may be the best tool for the task. “We have long envisioned unmanned aircraft as the best technology” to use to assess the abundance and distribution of seals in the Arctic, he said.
“Ice seals range so broadly and so far from shore that surveying the full range of these populations using traditional manned aircraft is challenging,” London said.
Originally, NOAA biologists planned for Martha to fly overhead and take photographs. But after seeing what the aircraft can do, Walker said Martha’s role could expand to helping biologists hunt for seals. Biologists use motorized Zodiac rafts to capture and tag seals.
“I can fly over the top of them and say, ‘There’s seals west of you 300 meters,’” Walker said. “That alone may help them capture more seals for study work.”
Contact staff Writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.
Community Discussion
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This UAF-UAV would be good for mapping methane-gas seeps on the N-Slope.
A mini-spectrometer with fiberoptic Synthetic Aperture can be easily carried in the payload.
http://www.jobinyvon.com/SiteResources/D...
I think it works well for fire management too!
I really think this is the wave of the future. I imagine that it's much, much cheaper to run a UAV than a helicopter for a day to do an aerial survey.
I can understand military use of UMV's, however these things are lawsuits waiting to happen. The key to VFR aircraft is to see and be seen, these aircraft are small and will be hard to see to other aircraft. The people piloting them will be on the ground hundreds of miles away with limited view of the horizon. All it will take is a midair and the university will have a lawsuit on their hands, and all the fault will lie on the university. The skies over Afghanistan and Iraq does not have near the general aviation users that the United States does. These aircraft will kill someone's family, yeah big cost savings.
speedstick-
Cars kill families EVERY DAY, do you own a car?
"ALASKANS ARE WILLING TO ACCEPT MORE RISK THAN OTHER PEOPLE."
famous last quotation from a former UAF Chief, of Risk Management a week after a campus death and two weeks before she was fired for imcompetence.
Speedstick, I think it depends on where they are using the UMV what the risks are. For instance, if they are using it for fire surveillance the airspace over the fire is likely to be shut down because of the fire anyway.
I'm sure there is a way to make these visible to pilots with radar, I'm not sure about those without though.
Laughable! Everything is a lawsuit waiting to happen. All it takes is a conflict and one person's unwillingness to accept responsibility for their role in it.
What a waste. I can't believe the University is asking for more state funds. All they do up the hill is talk about liberal socialist agendas. My uncle Joe can't pay his electric bill and they are build toy airplanes?
Oh wait, ignore this rant, I must be channeling one of the folks from last weeks University Budget post.
Questions for the UAF guys:
1. Why not pick up the phone and call the NRO? The National Reconnaissance Office has a number of platforms where high res photos can be taken from existing platforms- TR-1s, Satellites. None of those platforms have the FAA restrictions, and can cover much larger areas- much more quickly. The catch is that to review the take from these systems require a TS clearance. And tasking has to be approved by the NCA. Researchers with the proper clearance can review the data...
2. A Piper Super Cub can be equipped with the same instrumentation as the UAV. Have you done a cost benefit analysis? Note that the Super Cub only requires one pilot and does not need any special FAA clearance. A small plane even costs less.
Thanks.
I can see it being used for assisting finding lost people and also in law enforcement. It could also be used as a spy plane. Big Brother Is Watching.
On a down note how many other people are put out of work when an agency buys one of these over hiring someone?
Wow UAF!!! $100,000 for a toy airplane! Next year they will find another toy for $100,000 and the last toy will be considered outdated. Alaskastoryteller might be on to something. That's a good idea. However, I don't think the university would ever include themselves in looking for lost people. They would then start to express the expensive cost to run the plane, blah, blah, blah. Man power and all that stuff. Does UAF ever invent anything? Or do they just continue to buy other people crap. They would probably pay $10,000 for a turd in a box if you put a bow on it and said it was "special and like no other"
glad someone one is channeling the irrational today. Was starting to give my wife a headache.
If scientists can map the locations of methane seeps on Mars, then Alaskan's can map the locations of methane seeps in Alaska...
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/200...
...life on Mars??
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