Drone manufacturers Acecore Technologies has developed a new emergency response unmanned aerial system (UAS), designed to deal with situations arising due to the recent coronavirus pandemic.
The drone will still be suitable for other crowd management, law enforcement and first response applications.
The system is based on Acecore’s Zoe, a portable, foldable quadcopter which is lifted and propelled by four rotors.
It is constructed from carbon fibre and has a real-world flight time of half an hour, even during heavy wind and rain, according to tech site, Unmanned Systems Technology.
The new UAS features a 100 watt loudspeaker that can be heard within 1km of its range, and a volume of 80 decibels at a 100m altitude. This should allow users to cover a wide area and reach a large number of people at once.
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Operators can use the drone’s loudspeaker to communicate with their audience directly, or broadcast audio from a secondary device such as a laptop or a phone through the included handheld intercom.
The UAS payload also includes a waterproof, gimbal stabilised camera allows the camera to easily rotate. It also has a 10x optical zoom for detecting and recognising targets of interest and groups of people.
Both the camera feed and the drone’s command and control link have a range of up to 16km.
The pre-installed mission planner software features a “tap-to-fly” function to allow for quick autonomous flight.
The drone can be transported on and launched from the back of a truck or other suitably prepared vehicle, with the aid of automatic RTK precision take-off and landing and a remote-controlled electromagnetic lock on the landing gear.
RTK (Real Time Kinematic) is a GPS correction-technology technique that provides real-time corrections to location data when the survey drone is capturing photos of a site.
Upon contact, the magnetic lock secures the drone and the vehicle can drive off to its next mission.
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Source: Unmanned Systems Technology
