The autonomy of any unmanned system relies on a careful balance of key system parameters including processing power which relates directly to intelligence for sophisticated decision-making algorithms, power consumption which is critical to extending battery life, and minimizing size and weight of the mission control computer system. Additionally, the advent of small, high-performance vision systems using Cameralink, CoaxPress and other camera link technologies have now made possible a broad range unmanned applications with critical vision capabilities.
- Intelligent embedded computing
- Autonomous inspection & detection systems
- Small form factor vision systems
UAS: Key SBC Features
Inspection & Leak Detection Systems
Small form factor visions systems using low-power Intel Atom CPUs in conjunction with image framegrabber hardware now make possible autonomous leak inspection and detection of oil and gas pipelines or underwater piping. When coupled with data-intensive hyperspectral imaging hardware, even the chemical composition of a leak can be analyzed and quantitied real-time.
- Oil, gas pipelines, or underwater piping applications
- Real-time leak chemical composition analysis
Agriculture
Unmanned systems (both autonomous and non-autonomous) are expected to transform the agricultural industry in dramatic fashion by the year 2020 with aggregate demand exceeding $15 billion. Unmanned systems will touch all areas of agriculture from robotic harvesting, to crop decision-making with IoT hardware and cloud applications including pesticide scheduling, harvest scheduling, disease tracking and preventation and harvest yield analysis.
- Robotic harvesting
- Crop decision-making
- Harvest yield analysis
Military & Defense
The battlefield of the future will rely heavily on drones and unmanned autonomous systems of all types: Air (UAV), land (UGS), water surface (USV), and unwater (UUV) according to the latest Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2013-2038. Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) of these embedded systems will continue to be critical design factors, as will be keeping pace with year-over-year CPU performance which relates directly to intelligence, autonomy and allowable on-location endurance or persistence for these unmanned vehicles.
- Air, land, water surface, and unwater applications
- High-level on-location system endurance
Systems Integration
ADL Embedded Solutions is well versed at not only defining SBC and peripheral expansion board solutions for most applications, but also designing, creating and integrating custom enclosures to meet both low and high IP requirements for extended temperature and rugged environments.
