In
order to answer the increasing need of protection
and surveillance from emergency needs to Forward
Operating Bases, robotics brings a real capacity
advantage: reducing the human risks, improving the
performance throughout the mission, and reducing,
the need to staff. Spy’Arrow, the new low
cost, multi-payload micro-UAV system from Thales
has already a step ahead in the achievement of these
applications. The Spy' Arrow is an easy to use,
light-weight, portable UAV. Its predilection mission
is to perform quick and efficient, short range observations
while displaying a stabilized geo-referenced real
time video. Some other various missions packages
can be used such as atmosphere measurement payloads.
The
Spy'Arrow is a small hand launched delta
design with a wingspan of 670 mm. The Spy'Arrow
is easy to use and the operatot does not
require piloting skills. It can be operated
either in a fully autonomous mode or in
a manual assisted mode. The ground station
is implemented on a standard rugged laptop
connected to a small antenna box. The Spy'Arrow
UAV will generate geo-referenced video displays
in real time out to a range of up to 3 km,
while cruising at 27 knots. The Spy'Arrow
is equipped with a CCD PAL day camera, he
is always capable of carrying many different
payloads weighing up to 70 g, including
sensors dedicated to probing the atmosphere
to detect chemical or other threats. It
can be safely flown over populated areas
because the airframe is made from soft materials
and is powered by a rear-mounted electric
motor driving a propeller. Spy'Arrow can
be very quickly and easily put in-flight,
which drastically increases mission efficiency.
The Spy'Arrow UAV is hand-launched under
electronic flight control. No ground station
is required during the take-off process:
UAV reaches a safe hold-off circle till
it gets trajectory data. Use of catapult
is possible.
The ground station which controls the Spy'Arrow
UAV is use to control the mission, to make
data transmission, obtain video reception
from UAV. The ground station uses the same
battery than the UAV and equipped with battery
charger.
Visiting
French President Francois Hollande said at the White House on Friday,
May 18, 2012, that he stood by the pledge to withdraw French forces
from Afghanistan by the end of 2012. ...
