Canada's MicroPilot is revamping its CropCam small unmanned aircraft, which is used for agricultural surveillance.
The upgrade adds a larger battery system to the vehicle, extending its endurance.
"We should be introducing a new version some time at the end of this summer," said MicroPilot president Howard Loewen. It will be roughly the same size as the current CropCam but will carry its lithium-polymer batteries in a belly pod.
"We found that by having the batteries inside, that's a lot of weight and puts a lot of strain on the fuselage," Loewen said. Moving them outside "makes changing them faster, and that also means you're landing on the batteries rather than the other way around".
The change also means the CropCam can fly up to an hour-and-a-half, up from the current endurance of less than an hour.
Most CropCam customers are in Canada, where flight restrictions on small unmanned aircraft are more liberal than in the USA. One customer has used it to carve out the business niche of measuring gravel piles.
MicroPilot has also unveiled a new member of its autopilot family, which features triple-redundant systems. If one fails, the other two can recognise that and shut it down.
"If you have just two, you can't tell which one's right. If you have three, two says one thing and one says another, you know which one is right," said Loewen.
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Source: Flight Daily News
