UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

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vaibhav.n
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by vaibhav.n »

rohitvats wrote:
VinodTK wrote:<SNIP>The drones, to be inducted into the new SATA (surveillance and target acquisition) regiments being raised, form a part of the overall modernization plan for the 1.13-million force being pushed by Army chief General Bikram Singh.

<SNIP>
From an Orbat junkies perspective, the most important bit of news.

1. Each SATA Regiment it seems has an organic troop of 4 x UAV for surveillance and target acquisition.
2. Coupled with WLR, this gives a SATA Regiment tremendous capability.
3. Now, during my research on the Artillery Divisions in IA, it had come to fore that each Arty Division has a SATA Regiment. The above news means that each of these has integral UAV troop.
4. I know for sure IA had couple of SATA Regiments under some Corps reporting directly Corps HQ. Now, it seems that IA is raising 1 x SATA regiment per Corps - apart from the ones with Arty Divisions.

Rohit,


SATA Regiments have their genesis with the Survey Regiments which existed with IA on a Survey Regiment/Corps during WWII. These closely resemble the British Arty STA Units with 3 batteries of specialist troops in Sound Ranging, WLR, Survey and Spotting, UAV's and Met.

http://sainiksamachar.nic.in/englisharc ... -27(4).jpg
pentaiah
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by pentaiah »

vic wrote:There is already a tender out for 120hp engine for Rustom. so indigenous is out.

If two wankel cores are combined in each engine then it can give 100-120hp.
No combination two cores as it complicates the gearbox design
Instead muti chamber with individual rortars on common shaft is the way to go
Since no reciprocating action is generated rotors will all be at same phase angle and in the same mode such as induction compression ignition expansion and ejection like any four stroke cycle
T2 - T1 divided by T1 will still give the efficiency
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by rohitvats »

vaibhav.n wrote: <SNIP>Rohit,


SATA Regiments have their genesis with the Survey Regiments which existed with IA on a Survey Regiment/Corps during WWII. These closely resemble the British Arty STA Units with 3 batteries of specialist troops in Sound Ranging, WLR, Survey and Spotting, UAV's and Met.

http://sainiksamachar.nic.in/englisharc ... -27(4).jpg
Thanks for the background information. Was not aware of the same.

As I had said earlier, I knew some Corps had SATA Regiments. But this capability now seems to be spreading across all the Corps. And UAVs are the latest addition to their inventory.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Shrinivasan »

Rohit, will a SATA regiment have just 4 UAVs or a troop has 4 UAVs and a regiment will have multiple troops like this? 4 per regiment looks very in adequate? What is the TOE of a SATA regiment?
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by rohitvats »

Shrinivasan wrote:Rohit, will a SATA regiment have just 4 UAVs or a troop has 4 UAVs and a regiment will have multiple troops like this? 4 per regiment looks very in adequate? What is the TOE of a SATA regiment?
It seems each regiment will have a troops of 4 x UAVs. As for inadequate numbers - well, how many UAVs do have to begin with? The parceling out of these assets will happen as per the available strength - once we have more, there might be capacity enhancement.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by K Mehta »

From the article
Even as the Navy sets up spy drone bases along the coastline and IAF inducts "killer'' drones, the Army has inked yet another contract to acquire two more "troops'' (eight drones each) of Israeli `Heron' medium-altitude, long endurance UAVs.
Rohitbhai
Each regiment will have 4 troops?
so each complete regiment will have 16 UAVs?
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by rohitvats »

K Mehta wrote:From the article
Even as the Navy sets up spy drone bases along the coastline and IAF inducts "killer'' drones, the Army has inked yet another contract to acquire two more "troops'' (eight drones each) of Israeli `Heron' medium-altitude, long endurance UAVs.
Rohitbhai

Each regiment will have 4 troops? so each complete regiment will have 16 UAVs?
Thanks for re-posting this. Damn...I read that wrong earlier.

So, each troop had eight drones. Which is kind of funny because troops is generally sub-set of Battery/Squadron in Arty and Armored. And three batteries or Squadrons make up a Regiment. Eight drones to a troop is a pretty large number.

K Mehta sahab, there are no dedicated UAV Squadrons in IA as far as I know. It appears from the report that the SATA (Surveillance and Target Acquisition) Regiments of the Indian Army will have one troop. The organization of these regiments is as such (thanks for vaibhav.n for the details):

- 1 x Battery - Weapon Locating Radar and Sound Ranging
- 1 x Battery - Survey and spotting
- 1 x Battery - WLR and UAVs.

8 Drones to a regiment is a pretty healthy number...jingo is pleased. :mrgreen:
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by member_20317 »

Arre you people got me confused.

If there are 16 UAVs to a Regiment divided into 4 troops. Then each troop has 4 UAVs.

So 8 UAV to a troop kaise?

And if 8 UAV to a troop is right and 4 troop to a regiment is also right then I am confused even more.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by rohitvats »

ravi_g wrote:Arre you people got me confused.

If there are 16 UAVs to a Regiment divided into 4 troops. Then each troop has 4 UAVs.

So 8 UAV to a troop kaise?

And if 8 UAV to a troop is right and 4 troop to a regiment is also right then I am confused even more.
Saar, guilty as charged. I myself did not read that report properly.

First things first - each Regiment has only 1 x Troop of 8 UAVs. And these UAVs are part of overall set-up of a SATA Regiment. AFAIK, there are no dedicated UAV only regiments or squadrons in IA. The report says we're inducting 2 x troops (total 16 UAVs) for new SATA Regiments. So, two new SATA Regiments are slated for raising.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by member_23647 »

Rustom II will have foreign engine. Wankel engine producing 55hp is just 28kgs. There is already upgradi/higher thrust version program on the anvil as per ADE.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by vasu raya »

Image

The Nethra UAV, can we have a micro wankel engine for it? if mechanical wristwatches are to go by, one could fit all the gearing in a small package. The wankel engine would increase endurancee and reduce the cost of the UAV which most likely is due to the electric motors and the Li-ion batteries.

Other modifications could be,

a) the cross like chassis can be changed to scissors kind where when it is being ferried it will be closed and when deployed opens into the cross. This should allow these mini UAVs to be carried by Choppers or bigger UAVs such as Rustoms and be deployed close to the site along with special forces

b) the chassis could be shaped into a concave so it can double up as a small mesh antenna good for Ku band?

c) use of suction cups to the landing gear so that they can stick to rooftops or walls while in wait mode

d) in a assasin config, arming with sufficient explosive power so as to breach metal doors and concrete walls either to enable access to special forces or when deployed as a swarm let the other UAVs past the breach.

e) networking, so in a scenario where a target is inside a building and needs to be neutralized, then a squad of 4 UAVs which 'know' the inside layout of the building can be programmed so that first one breaches the main door, rest of the 3 pass through, they then navigate indoors to the target, another one breaches the room door of the target, the penultimate one neutralies the target, the last one is filming the whole sequence and also does face recognition to identify the specific target for the 3rd UAV. It then beams this info to external agents as soon as it gets signal and then self destructs. In this case we have 3 UAVs that are armed and one in a damage assessment & backup role.

watch this video originally posted by pentaiah and one would think once they are ready for primetime they would have been of immense value for special forces such as the Mali operation

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/r ... rones.html
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by keshavchandra »

DRDO giving final shape to high-speed target drone ‘Abhyas’
Abhyas, a high-speed expendable aerial target (HEAT) drone, is taking definite shape at the hangars of Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE). The scientists are now working on the propulsion and control systems to be fitted onboard ‘Abhyas’, taking the project closer to its final configuration.

Kept under wraps till Aero India-2013, ‘Abhyas’ is tipped as the younger brother of ‘Lakshya’, a pilot-less target aircraft (PTA), now being extensively used by the three wings of Services.

In an interview to Express, ADE Director P S Krishnan confirmed that ‘Abhyas’ had already undergone a proof of the concept, pre-project trial at the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s new test-range in Chitradurga.

“The first experimental launch (minus the engine) of ‘Abhyas’ was held last year at the Chitradurga range. It was the first ground-based trial held at the new range. We are now working on a small gas turbine engine weighing 19 kg having a thrust of 25 kg to be fitted on to ‘Abhyas’,” Krishnan said.

He said, in order to put the project on a fast-track, ADE scientists have used the same toe-body of ‘Lakshya’.

“We have sized the wings and tail plane in proportionate to that of Lakshya so that we are able to get the final product at the earliest. We have conceived a launcher and also identified two 68-mm rockets for ‘Abhyas’. The first experimental flight successfully demonstrated the launch and configuration capabilities,” Krishnan said. With an endurance of 25 to 30 minutes, ‘Abhyas’ will be fitted with sensors and is GPS-enabled.

It will have onboard actuators, a flight control computer and a miss-distance indicator. The project was sanctioned with an initial DRDO funding of `15 crore and ADE will roll out 15 ‘Abhyas’ technology demonstrators (TDs) in the next two years. The Services have floated a combined global tender projecting the requirement of 225 HEAT drones and ADE said it would not be bidding for the same.

The Navy wants HEAT platforms so that it can do away with the post-launch recovery modes, which are time-consuming and difficult in a huge scenario like the sea.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by symontk »

I heard a peculiar noise (propeller aircrafts) near marathahlli airport in Bangalore one hour back (9AM), seems they are testing out UAV's possibly Rustom. I saw a small craft with white wing tips. I dont think its Business aircrafts that freq land in HAL airport
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by vic »

HAL makes-assembles Garrett engine, it would make way more sense if they + DRDO go in for a Rustom-3 with Garrett engines, which would be in the category of Reaper or Eitan TP i.e. 6000kg MTOW with ceiling of 50,000 feet. Rustom 2 with piston engines will have limited use in Himalayas.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

Did not see this coming. HAL has issues a request for EOI on "Co-development and co-production of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs)"

They are looking to collaborate on 3 categories: MALE, Short-range tactical and mini. Very interesting specs indeed.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Austin »

Why dont they simply lic manuf IAI Searcher-2 and DRDO Nishant that should meet 2 of their three requirement and these are already in the forces.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by tushar_m »

vic wrote:HAL makes-assembles Garrett engine
i wanted to ask someone here where are the application of Garrett engine in India or is it just for export
tushar_m

Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by tushar_m »

Indranil
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

Few posts back I had posted HAL's EOI for "Co-development and co-production of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs)" for 3 categories: MALE, Short-range tactical and mini. I think I know where HAL is trying to go with this. ELBIT systems and HAL have a JV called HALBIT. ELBIT has provided all its UASs for development and production at HAL.

So the MALE requirement: Most probably HAL is making a case for a development of Hermes 900 into a larger drone. Question is what happens to Rustom-2 which fits HAL's intended specs beautifully? It should have been flying soon (even by revised estimates), but recently there has been a tender by ADE to make its wind tunnel model :eek:. Whenever Rustom-2 comes onboard, who is going to produce it? Will it compete with HAL's product?

For the short range tactical UAS: Is HAL seeking a development of the Hermes 450? Question is what happens to Rustom-1? Probably NAL can continue to build it along with Taneja. Nishant is already being assembled by HAL.

And for the mini UAS, looks like they are trying to build something like Skylark-1LE. Are they already selling the same to the Indian Army and paramilitary forces?
From HAL-Connect- Issue 65.
Business from Skylark UAVs for Indian Army and Paramilitary forces is seen as additional business opportunity.

Also any info on the rotary wing UAVs being planned from HAL. From HAL-Connect- Issue 65.
Future helicopter programs of RWRDC include IMRH, Dhruv (civil version) and Rotary Wing UAVs of 10 & 30 Kg.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

keshavchandra wrote:DRDO giving final shape to high-speed target drone ‘Abhyas’
And cross-posting from Indian military aviation thread.
arijitkm wrote:Kadet Defence Systems: India's first company to win defence deals for aerial targets
Khaitan's company delivered the first batch of its JX2 (propellor-based) unmanned aerial targets in December last year. These can achieve speeds up to 0.2 Mach. Kadet's JX3 is a jet turbine powered UAV and can touch 0.5 Mach. He sources engines from Germany and builds the systems in his Kolkata factory. The expendable systems are cost effective, starting at Rs 1 lakh per unit for the JX2.
This is an interesting space. So both these target drones are similar in specs. This means that according o the new procurement policies, at least one of the companies will be chosen to supply the target drones.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Austin »

DRDO Projects

After successful development of Pilotless Target Aircraft (PTA), Lakshya; Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), Nishant; Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV Rustom-I; and various mini and micro UAVs, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has stepped up for development of the following UAVs

• Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) UAV-Rustom-ll.
• High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) UAV.
• Rotary Wing UAV.
• High Speed Expendable Aerial Target.

The present status of Rustom-I and II projects are given below:-

Rustom-1: Major objectives, like taxi take off and landing, endurance and altitude of this Technology Demonstrator have been accomplished through a total of 26 flights conducted so far. Further flights are planned to evaluate its payload capabilities.

Rustom-2: The project is progressing as per schedule with active participation of the Users. Preliminary Design Reviews and most of the Critical Design Reviews have been completed. Its first flight is likely to be commenced during mid-2014.

This information was given by Defence Minister Shri AK Antony in a written reply to Shri NaranbhaiKachhadiain Lok Sabha today.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by vic »

HALE? Interesting, hmmmmmmm!
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

HAL's 25 kN turbofan engine is for UAV applications. Hmmm, something is cooking which we have no clue about.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by vic »

If the HALE is Rustom-2 derivative with turbofan engines then it will be something like Global Hawk. But I thought that DRDO was referring to some solar energy powered experimental UAV for HALE?
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Neshant »

if this is what they are showing as declassified info, you can only imagine the classified capabilities they have

its called persistent stare

India's stuff must seem absolutely primitive by comparison to the kind of tech US has.

India needs this on a high priority basis if for no other reason than to track down terrorists who plant bombs in cities and stuff. Its use in crime fighting and urban planning and all kinds of construction and monitoring will be invaluable in the years ahead.

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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

Neshant,

There is no question that it is a great technology. But it is just the first step. I don't think that this will solve the surveillance problem and I will tell you why. I work in the field of high performance computing and specifically in Big-Data problems. The classical questions arise:
1. How do you store so much data?
2. How do you analyze so much data? Most big data problems today are what is called WORN (Written Once Read Never).

The problem is that the bottleneck is not the imaging capability, but the eyeballs. The true technology would be when points of interests in terms of place and time are identified by software and only a small catalog is presented to the eyeballs to peruse. Otherwise think of imaging a huge naxal area. Okay, now where do I look? In the breeze all the trees are moving!
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Neshant »

indranilroy wrote: 1. How do you store so much data?
2. How do you analyze so much data?
Come on, #1 is hardly a challenge. The video itself contains hints on how this is done.

Only that which moves or that which the algorithm determines is important gets stored. The vast majority of things do not move (i.e. a parking lot, the road..etc). Further algorithms can exclude things like trees even if they do sway. Algorithms can even log the movements of cars or people in a major part of the city but not in other less important parts of a city. Thus only a small subset of the data gets stored even if it appears that everything is being stored.

It can all be laid out in a "Log rule" in the software.

The analysis of the data in the initial phase will be manual - trace an event like a blast back to its culprits manually by just hitting rewind. Later on, people or cars or some specific can be tracked and databased. Even more sophisticated algorithm can predict criminal behavior like purse snatching where the algorithm sees one individual approaching another in close proximity and then running away - that triggers a flag which can be analysed by a human operator. Fires can be dealt with immediately by directing fire trucks onto the site even as the fire is about to escalate.

All these are not major challenges in my opinion.

This field is going to expand and expand VERY rapidly especially once drones carrying persistent vision equipment becomes common place. Police work will rely heavily on it.

This I wrote just sitting here contemplating it. If I sat here longer, I'd have written a novel.

Unfortunately India will be lightyears behind the curve - who is India is even thinking of the above. We are building drones with imported IR cameras hung with a missile or two and we think that is state of the art when its really one step up from an RC toy.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

Well, if I am not wrong, the video says "stores and streams" "millions of terabytes of data daily". (which must be an exxageration in first place).

1. Anyways, video is encoded in the following fashion. Typically a 30 fps video will have a "key" frame which is lossy compression of the image at that frame. The 29 frames following it just record the difference from the previous frame. In your case, you are justified in saying that the keyframe can be more interspersed, probably at 1 every hour, instead of one every second. But even then it will create huge volumes of data.

2. I think you have confused with what they meant by identification of moving objects. This is very common image processing technology. If you wonder into a senior design lab at an university, you will find atleast one AI project using tracking of moving objects. The breakthrough that these guys have reached is that they can handle many many many moving objects together. That would require specialized hardware. FPGAs can be programmed to do it, but I feel that it won't be that efficient. At the Supercomputing 2012 conference, I was talking to specialized chip manufacturers who can build very lightweight ASICs which just do pattern recognition. They showed me instances of that machine tracking various kinds of objects (a more difficult thing to do, if I ask you to only mark moving humans amongst all moving objects). Chips like that could have been used.

3. All the example usages that you said, are when you know a point of interest and you work forward or backwards from there. If you are actively searching for that point of interest, this does not help you. For example, I am trying to find maoists movement in jungle. where do I start looking? And if I knew where to look wouldn't I send my UAV with even a narrow field of voew to focus on that point of interest.

4. You grossly underestimate the military grade UAVs. If you think that Nishant, Rustom etc. are scaled up RC models, you could not be more wrong. I build and fly aeromodels and am building an UAV with autonav with a 5 km radius. Please do not go there. You would be on really slippery ground there. Yes, we are around 20 years behind USA in UAVs, Israel is 5 and China is 15 years behind.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Neshant »

its an interesting question.

how does a low tech group fight drones.
----

New jihadi magazine appeals for help against drones

LONDON (Reuters) - A new jihadi magazine set up by militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan has appealed to Muslims around the world to come up with technology to hack into or manipulate drones, describing this as one of their most important priorities.

The first issue of the English-language online magazine, called "Azan", was published on May 5, the SITE intelligence monitoring group said. It compared Azan to "Inspire" magazine, set up by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

In what appeared to be an acknowledgement of the effectiveness of U.S. drone strikes, the magazine said these were affecting the war in the Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan - where al Qaeda is based along with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Afghan Taliban fighters.

Devoting a section of the 80-page issue to drones, it said these represented a challenge to the Muslim community, or Ummah.

"With the death of so many Muslim assets, this is one of the utmost important issues that the Ummah must unite and come up with an answer to," said the magazine, which opens with excerpts from speeches from Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar and late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"Any opinions, thoughts, ideas and practical implementations to defeat this drone technology must be communicated to us as early as possible because these would aid the Ummah greatly in its war against the Crusader-Zionist enemy."

Western officials say drone strikes have been highly effective in disrupting the activities of al Qaeda and its allies in the tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Critics object to the secrecy of the drone program, question its legality and raise concerns about civilian casualties.

Pakistan - which in late 2011 ordered the CIA to leave the remote Shamsi air base in western Pakistan which it used for drones - condemns drone strikes. It has repeatedly denied cooperating with the United States in identifying targets.

Azan magazine accused the Pakistan Army of continuing to work with the United States - going as far as to suggest it had set up new secret bases in Pakistan to replace Shamsi. Given intense hostility to drones in Pakistan, this would be very difficult to do without detection.

"Azan" covers many areas where al Qaeda is active, from Syria to Mali, and celebrates Afghanistan as the base for the start of global jihad. Its focus, however, is on Pakistan.

One section is devoted to criticizing Malala Yousufzai, the schoolgirl who survived being shot by the Pakistani Taliban last year after she spoke out for her right to an education.

Another segment attacks the Pakistan Army for turning its back on traditional enemy India to fight in the tribal areas. Laced with references that have a strong resonance in Pakistan, it appeals to young soldiers to turn away from the military.

The army has been accused of fighting militants who attack Pakistan while tolerating those who focus on Afghanistan. "Azan", however, says it considers the entire state apparatus - from the army to police to intelligence agencies - as the enemy.

The alleged evils of democracy also get their own section - echoing comments made by the Pakistani Taliban in recent weeks. They have carried out a string of attacks, mainly on liberal, secular-leaning parties - ahead of an election on May 11.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Neshant »

indranilroy wrote: 2. I think you have confused with what they meant by identification of moving objects. This is very common image processing technology. If you wonder into a senior design lab at an university, you will find atleast one AI project using tracking of moving objects. The breakthrough that these guys have reached is that they can handle many many many moving objects together.

The tracking is in the post-processing stage, not necessarily real time - at least for now.
I dont' think its that difficult especially with some pre-programmed human input on what to look for and areas of interests outlined in the scene.
3. All the example usages that you said, are when you know a point of interest and you work forward or backwards from there. If you are actively searching for that point of interest, this does not help you. For example, I am trying to find maoists movement in jungle. where do I start looking?
You look for movement and narrow it down from there. In the case of India, we are talking about basic capabilities first - because even the basic persistent stare capability is non-existant.
4. You grossly underestimate the military grade UAVs. If you think that Nishant, Rustom etc. are scaled up RC models, you could not be more wrong. I build and fly aeromodels and am building an UAV with autonav with a 5 km radius. Please do not go there. You would be on really slippery ground there.
You have an auto-pilot with inertial navigation or GPS, a camera and what else? Somehow that stuff sounds low tech. Its what hobbyists are doing.

Persistent stare is really something challenging with India should pursue. There is a pressing need for it both for law & order and for other civilian purposes. I really hope Indian UAV program takes on the challenge of developing it. Developing UAVs that fly with a camera with a network link - that's old hat now. Time to up the challenges.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

Neshant wrote: The tracking is in the post-processing stage, not necessarily real time - at least for now.
I dont' think its that difficult especially with some pre-programmed human input on what to look for and areas of interests outlined in the scene.
You are back to square 1 and my point. If you knew the area of interest, you would just use the present capability of focusing at that area and then moving from there.
Neshant wrote: You look for movement and narrow it down from there. In the case of India, we are talking about basic capabilities first - because even the basic persistent stare capability is non-existant.
There is no use of "basic" persistent stare capability. You would not know what to do with that amount of videos. Even with current UAV systems, the bottleneck is how do you analyze the continuous stream of data coming from the UAV.

Persistent stare is useful in cases (as you said) where you are investigating an event (and hence know your point of interest). It can also be useful, if there is processing which can identify points of interests and then human beings can look at those points of interests. There is also a requirement of analyzing intelligent ways of discarding useless data. Otherwise, you won't be able to store data worth more than 1 week old.
Neshant wrote: You have an auto-pilot with inertial navigation or GPS, a camera and what else? Somehow that stuff sounds low tech. Its what hobbyists are doing.

Persistent stare is really something challenging with India should pursue. There is a pressing need for it both for law & order and for other civilian purposes. I really hope Indian UAV program takes on the challenge of developing it. Developing UAVs that fly with a camera with a network link - that's old hat now. Time to up the challenges.
For a hobbyist UAV like mine it is fairly simple. There are of course some predefined flight profiles, like return to base etc. But for a full blown MALE, HALE, it is very very different. The first thing, is to have something which has a MTOW of 24 hours. This is easier said than done.
1. It has to be a full blown plane which can take such long endurance flights and survive 30-40 years. not many planes of that size have 24 hour endurances.
2. Now because it is a full blown plane, in case of Rustom-2, you have to make sure that it doesn't collide with another plane or drop on to civilian areas. I did not think of this one till I watched a video at AI'13 about the certification of such planes.
3. Also auto landing and take off of such full blown planes are very different and complex. If you have seen a model UAV land, it's flight path is quite generously. This is not the case a full blown plane ( ascale model of Rustom-1 was lost due to this). When Airbus (the pioneer) tried to implement auto-pilot during landing plane, they faced a lot of problems too. Their demonstration resulted in catastrophic crash.
4. For hobbyist, all the servos are electric and as long as you have juice in your battery, you will be fine. For a military UAV of over 2 tons, it is all hydraulics. To develop hydraulics which can work from -55C to 50C, in rain, salt and dirt is not an easy task.
5. The there is communication. You have to maintain secure and uninterrupted communication with the UAV, even when it is not in NLOS. For Low altitude drones, NLOS breaks of at 300 km. Then you have to work with relays. Now you have relays in serial which decreases your MTOW.
6. Latency, when communicating over large distances, the latency introduced by all the relays makes the plane and the operator out of sync. This is a major problem for global operations. Only US has a solution to this as of now.
7. And then of course there is the issue of payload components. And no they are not just stabilized cameras.

Think about it, if making MALEs and HALEs were so easy, how come the world has a handful of them. Whereas in USA, every town has at least one hobbyist who has a toy UAV. India needs to get Rustom-2 right. And ADE is making very strong steps towards it. They are going to start testing it in about a year from now. From a tender of work they just released they are going to be done with testing 3.5-4 years from now.
Neshant
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Neshant »

You are back to square 1 and my point. If you knew the area of interest, you would just use the present capability of focusing at that area and then moving from there.
Put a little bit of creative thinking in.

DATA -> LARGE BUFFER -> ANALYSIS -> STORAGE

If there is an explosion at one point in the city, the data buffer relating to that imagery at that site for the past X minutes is immediately saved by the algorithm. Its analyzed and objects of interest if still in the vacinity start being tracked in real time. The vast majority of that buffer is discarded if nothing is happening for the duration of the day.

Time shifting is the benefit of having a large buffer that sits between the incoming data and the analysis/storage. You don't need to know where to look at, events that occur and are detected tell you where to look at and you use analysis of the short term memory (large buffer) to begin the tracking.

There are probably a million ways to get going on this - but nothing is going to happen if folks with low creativite abilities are in charge saying it can't happen.
Otherwise, you won't be able to store data worth more than 1 week old.


Never mind 1 week, if they have access to data that is 1 day old, that is a VAST step up from what's available at present - which is absolute zero.

If investigators had access to information that is even 1 hour prior to a blast, that is invaluable. If insurance companies had the same about a highway collission, that is invaluable. Or 1 hour prior to a fire/arsonist. All of these are detectable events without human intervention. Just about any information on the past leading up to a major event is invaluable.

Sadly India will fall behind in this endevor with guys saying "its not possible". Not even the BASIC persistent stare capabilities with human rather than computerised interaction currently exists or will exist in the next 5 years. It will be light years before India develops an advanced algorithmic based sensor fusion distributed processing of mega terabytes of data that US is no doubt pursuing.

For once, India should aim to keep parity with the US. Landing and taking off a large UAV, communicating with it..etc this is all to be expected of a UAV. Its not 21st century futuristic technology, this has been done since the 70s and early 80s. That is just the platform. The *real* heart of a UAV is its SENSOR package. There should be a branch of military R&D dedicated to nothing other than building sensor packages for UAVs and nothing else.

Unless India begins NOW, it will fall hopelessly behind.

If ARGUS is what they have declassified, can you even imagine how advanced the stuff must be that is classified ?
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by neerajb »

indranilroy wrote:3. Also auto landing and take off of such full blown planes are very different and complex. If you have seen a model UAV land, it's flight path is quite generously. This is not the case a full blown plane ( ascale model of Rustom-1 was lost due to this). When Airbus (the pioneer) tried to implement auto-pilot during landing plane, they faced a lot of problems too. Their demonstration resulted in catastrophic crash.
Couldn't follow the whole series of to and fro posts but I guess the crash in question here is A320 crash in 1988. First of all, no landing (auto or manual) was planned for the flypast. They were to come low and slow, maintain alpha max at 100 feet, do it again in reverse direction and fly away. It crashed because the engines couldn't give enough power to keep it aloft (pilot error ?? / mechanical issues ??) and the computers pitched it down to avoid stalling it.

On A320s they have the auto land feature which the pilots are required to use once a month just to ensure that it works, Though the auto landing is not as smooth as a manual one.

Cheers....
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

^^^

I am aware of the incident. The jury is out on that accident. Basically at that time, the pundits were torn between welcoming the fly-by-wire or having the traditional system. So a lot of people believe a lot of things. If you see the video of the accident, you can see that the plane never pitches down.


If we believe the pilot of the plane (Airbus's star pilot who luckily survived), he wanted to climb out (as was pre-decided for the demo), but the computer thought that it was safer to land the plane. The computer won!

I am aware that that auto-landing has since been perfected. The point that I was making is auto-landing a 2 ton plane is not the same as auto-recovery of a RC-model.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by neerajb »

indranilroy wrote:If we believe the pilot of the plane (Airbus's star pilot who luckily survived), he wanted to climb out (as was pre-decided for the demo), but the computer thought that it was safer to land the plane. The computer won!
If you watch the ACI episode which covered the plane crash, FDR data clearly showed the elevator pitching down the plane when the pilot commanded it to pitch up. You can't guess all this by watching a video, probably it all happened once it entered the forest.

Secondly, computer doesn't just say ok I want to land. Under normal law, it won't let you stall the plane but ofcourse you can always crash a plane if you want to. If you see that episode which contains the captains interview and the controversy that followed, he clearly stated that the engines didn't respond on time and that there was a flaw in earlier A320 engines. Though there were other events which led to the crash, like people gathering on the wrong runway which had a forest at the end, the maps that the pilots had didn't show the forest, unstable approach to the airfield, altimeter issues, inadequate engine response (alleged by pilot). The plane did what it had to, i.e. didnt' let the pilots stall the plane. If the pilots had tried to climb when there was insufficient power from the engines, the plane would have anyway stalled and crashed and the casualties would have been higher. JMT.

Cheers....
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

vikrant wrote:If the pilots had tried to climb when there was insufficient power from the engines, the plane would have anyway stalled and crashed and the casualties would have been higher. JMT.

Cheers....
Fair point!
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Indranil »

From latest tender for landing gears for Rustom-II:

1. Don't expect the prototype to fly before the last quarter of 2014.
2. The aircraft will have a MTOW of 2600 - 2860 kgs.
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Singha »

Too little, too late as usual. A hale uav should have been a crisis mode national project like agni5 or nirbhay
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Lalmohan »

the a320 would not have crashed if the manouver had been done at a higher altitude - there would have been enough height to recover safely
the pilot would have probably got away with it on a non-fbw aircraft, but here the fcs kept the nose down to preserve airspeed, and did not allow for the lack of clearance in height (which a pilot could by reflex). the engines were commanded to power up, but the spool up time was longer than the descent time
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Re: UAVs, Drones, Remote Surveillance Tech

Post by Pranav »

Some UAV target acquisition research -

Image

http://www.et.byu.edu/~beard/research_o ... ew%208.pdf
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