Feature
DRONE RESEARCH FLIES HIGH From safely dropping aid into remote villages, to monitoring the Amazon for devastating forest fires, to daily trips to an active volcano’s crater to assess the danger – drones are fast becoming lifesavers. Three exciting research projects are at the cusp of changing lives for the better by breaking new ground in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs. ULTRA ULTRA (Unmanned Low-cost TRAnsport) is a UAV, or drone, with a difference. Many differences, in fact. ULTRA is the UK’s heaviest non-military UAV, weighing in at 350 kilos. It’s powered by an industrial engine (and has two on board for reliability). It can fly for 1,000 kilometres at a time, at speeds of up to 100kph. It’s low cost to build and maintain. And it’s a humanitarian aid aircraft. Funded philanthropically through a charity called Windracers, a team of five postdoctoral engineering researchers, led by Professor Jim Scanlan, has been developing ULTRA. Jim, Professor of Aerospace Design, said: “Windracers approached us to see if we could develop something to help with delivering food aid in South Sudan. Huge bags of rice, corn and maize get to the country really efficiently, but once they arrive at a transport warehouse they have to be delivered to lots of tiny, remote villages. The aid can’t go by road as there is no infrastructure, so it has to go by air. The cheapest way to do that, currently, is using Russian ex-military aircraft, which fly at 5,000 feet and throw the aid out of the back. As a result, you either have to equip it with a parachute, which is expensive, or risk waste from bags splitting on impact. Either way it is still a very expensive way of distributing aid.”
ULTRA in flight
To address the problem, ULTRA has been designed. “It’s as easy to load as a hatchback car,” said Jim. “You don’t need any special skills to operate it – you basically load it up and press ‘go’.” ULTRA is capable of airdropping and landing on rough strips of land. “Because it’s unmanned, it can fly very low and very slow so bags of aid can be dropped without parachutes,” explained Jim. “It will be the lowest cost way of delivering food and other aid to remote communities where there isn’t a road network.” The team at Southampton has also developed the avionics – the brain on board. Jim said: “You upload a mission, giving instructions on where to fly, where to land, where to drop off aid, and what to do if there is a problem such as an engine failure or bad weather.”
Students with ULTRA
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A prototype of ULTRA has been built and is currently undergoing an extensive programme of test flights. Once finalised, Windracers is planning to commission hundreds of ULTRA aircraft for use in countries where aid needs to be distributed.