Unmanned Systems
June, 2009
Many businesses are getting into the unmanned systems industry these days, bringing their knowledge and abilities in other areas to bear on this growing field. Canada’s Neptec Design Group is no exception, but it’s bringing its expertise all the way from outer space.
The Ottawa, Ontario-based company began life nearly two decades ago as a contractor to the Canadian Space Agency and to NASA as a vision systems contractor. At any given time, some of its work is flying overhead on a space shuttle or the International Space Station. “We started off with the Space Vision System,” says company President Iain Christie. “If you look at the space station, you see that it’s covered in black dots. Those are actually targets for the vision system and that’s how we decided how the system can figure out where the pieces are.”
Positioning space station components is tricky and precise business, so the vision system “is designed to basically look at those dots on the two elements, one that you’re moving and one that you’re holding fixed,” he tells Unmanned Systems. Designed to help astronauts build the space station, it’s also used by astronauts flying the space shuttle or operating the space station’s robot arm.
About nine years ago, company officials became interested in three-dimensional data as a way to improve the Space Vision System, but, “we realized there was an awful lot more we could do with 3D,” Christie says. “There was room in the sensor business but there was an awful lot more room in the business of being able to collect and interpret that data.”
The company’s algorithms collect 3D data efficiently and analyze it efficiently, meaning a “human in the loop” can get better knowledge, not just data, without overloading precious bandwidth. Once the company realized it could do that, “that’s when we started making connections with the military field,” Christie says. For instance, the company has worked with Defence Research Development Canada, the research and development arm of the Department of National Defence, on automatic target recognition. The system can take a light detection and ranging (LIDAR) scan of a vehicle and decide what type of vehicle it is, a tank or a car or something else.
“We found that we could actually develop the data very quickly,” Christie says. “It takes very little 3D data. This was the sort of the ‘ah hah’ moment—if we’re very efficient in how we collect the data, we can identify vehicles in near real-time. We could actually do tracking in real time, too.” The technology is also good for change detection, another hot topic in the unmanned systems world, he says.
The limitations on bandwidth are a frequent source of concern in the unmanned aircraft systems world, and Neptec felt its 3D systems could help.
“The knock on 3D data is that it’s too big, it’s too expensive. But if it’s done right, it’s actually more efficient because it isn’t a picture of the world, it’s a measurement of the world. There’s so much information in the data. The UAV market just seemed to be one that was quite a natural fit for a lot of things that we do.”
For instance, this summer NASA will fly the company’s TriDAR system, which combines a triangulation sensor with a LIDAR sensor. When combined with Neptec’s Intelligent 3D software, it could allow precise docking without the need for those external target markers.
“It has two sensors: one long range, one short range. It’s unique in that you can use that same sensor from everything to a few kilometers right down to a separation of a few millimeters. That’s unique and that’s a different innovation,” Christie says.
“It’s intended to guide an unmanned spacecraft to mate with another unmanned spacecraft. In some ways there are tasks for UAVs that are very similar to that,” Christie says, an obvious one being “UAV refueling. It seems to us that there’s an awful lot of commonality in those two tasks.”
More immediately, Neptec’s 3D processes are suitable for unmanned systems, particularly UAVs, because “our philosophy is about more information, less data,” Christie says. “Our feeling is, especially in the military game ... that whole philosophy really resonates because UAV ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] is one of those things where there’s an awful lot of data generated but there’s not a lot of information.”
The company says it could create a sensor package that could do change detection or “smart” tracking and fit in a payload weighing 100 to 150 grams (4-6 oz.).
“We have very efficient processing algorithms, the most efficient ones we’re aware of,” he says. The system “learns things form the data to help us decide what to collect next ... it’s all at the sensor, so we’re not involving the downlink bandwidth at all. If you tell the aircraft, I want you to fi nd all of the white Broncos and take pictures and come home, that’s literally a job we could envision doing.”
The company is now seeking partners in the unmanned systems world and has already talked to a number of potential partners that Christie isn’t at liberty to name. It is also making its presence felt at shows such as CANSEC (Ottawa, May 27-28, Booth 3308 in the General Dynamics Hall), Paris Air Show (week of June 15, Canadian Showcase, Hall 3, Booth 49), and AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America 2009.
Jason Di Tommaso, Neptec’s Vice President of Global Marketing and Strategic Development, says although the company is relatively small, at about 100 employees, it’s able to work in a senior position as an integrator.
“Working on the shuttle program, you learn very quickly how to work in a large and complicated structure,” he says. “We’ve been taught by the best in some ways at NASA so we’re anxious to export that into other areas as well.”
Brett Davis is editor of Unmanned Systems.