Spain’s Basque region provincial government is to stage an unmanned air vehicle-based fisheries surveillance and protection demonstration from August until late in the year using a new purpose-developed air vehicle.
The civil UAV demonstration has been in the planning stage for 18 months, with prime contractor Aerovision already having undertaken flight trials of the new UAV – designated Fulmar.
The fisheries surveillance demonstration is believed to be the first of its kind in Europe.
Similar trials have previously been carried out in the USA by Insitu using its purpose-developed SeaScan UAV, which has since been developed with Boeing into the ScanEagle system.
Fulmar is a 3m (10ft)-span flying wing design augmented with two cranked tail surfaces either side of a centrally mounted internal combustion engine with pusher propeller.
The 20kg (45lb) UAV is launched using a rubber-powered lightweight catapult and can be recovered either by flying into a net or by landing in the water.
The system’s ground control station uses a single laptop computer with twin datalinks to support air-vehicle control and real-time imagery transfer from the UAV sensor suite.
Source: Flight International
