If there is no defined flight plan and a user is in the immediate area and needs to see over the next hill or around the next corner, the system can be launched without a flight plan. It will go through its automated launch sequencing and hover over its takeoff point at 50 feet, waiting for the operator to give it manual commands.

“It’s a very modular system,” said Fulton. There is a center body with the engine and the vanes; there is an avionics pod, with the flight management unit, the inertial measurement unit, and the avionics circuitry; and there is a payload pod with the GPS receiver, the uplink and downlink radios, and the sensors themselves — the daylight and IR cameras. “We put together pod configurations to add various radios in them that operate in various frequency bands based upon the mission the vehicle is flying,” Fulton added. Various sensors, both IR and EO, were added, as well as EO cameras and field-of-view IR cameras.

Part of the ACTD trials were in-placement trials — getting it in place and airborne. “One of the portability goals was to place the system and have it airborne in less than five minutes,” explained Fulton. “An operator who has received three days of classroom training and two days of flight training can deploy the system in less than five minutes.”

Testing and Implementation

Since 2004, the U.S. Navy had been looking for an airborne component for their suite of robotic vehicles. The Navy’s ordnance disposal team’s primary mission is the improvised explosive device fight, primarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. They wanted a sensor platform they could use in conjunction with their ground robotic platform. According to Fulton, “There are situations in which their ground robots could not get to things, and a hover and stare platform like the one we had could get there. They had explored using three-rotor helicopter systems, and could not come up with a viable solution.”

For the IED deployment in Iraq, Honeywell built 20 air vehicles, and all 20 deployed to Iraq. For the military utility assessment, the company built 50 air vehicles, and those have been in the possession of the 25th Infantry Division. “They’ve been doing various activities with those vehicles — training and utility assessment. Deployment with the IED was the first real-life deployment,” according to Fulton. It also marked the first time a ducted-fan UAV was used during combat missions.

In the first quarter of 2006, Honeywell demonstrated TMAV to the Navy, and later that year, Honeywell validated what combining an air robot such as the MAV with the Navy’s ground robot could do. Said Fulton, “They subsequently did a deployment in theater with a system including the GMAV, and had very good results with it. They are moving toward their own program relative to an air- and ground-centric system.”