What's next for the Pentagon after the Replicator programme?
Although the Replicator initiative has made several accomplishments, there are still multiple gaps to plug across the US Department of Defense (DoD) and its services.
Siteco launches Sky-Scanner payload
Siteco has announced the launch of a new Sky-Scanner LiDAR and imagery data collection system for UAVs that has been in development since 2015.
The Sky-Scanner's development project was undertaken in collaboration with Japanese surveying and inspection engineering firm ASCO-DAITO and Italian survey company LTS.
The airborne data collection system aims to fill the gap between expensive and complex LiDAR systems and low-cost, low-altitude photogrammetry systems.
Sky-Scanner consists of a Velodyne VLP16 scanner, 16-20 Mpx high resolution camera for imagery and an Applanix AP15 inertial navigation system. The company has verified accuracies of ±5 cm on regular surfaces (roads, walls), and ±8 cm on natural ground with vegetation. The double return laser-scanner allows vegetation filtering.
The compact 3.5kg system (including batteries) has a five hour operating window.
The system has been designed to be UAS platform and mission planning software agnostic. The post-processing software generates geo-referenced LAS files which can be imported with any point-cloud management software.
According to the company the system has met performance expectations on the DJI Matrice-600 and DJI-S1000 UAVs.
Augusto Burchi, CEO, Siteco, said: 'We have seen many companies offering lidar and imaging solutions, but none have been able to deliver the data quality at a price required by our partners. The Sky-Scanner is the first such light, compact and cost effective system deployable on a wide variety of commercially available UAVs.'
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