Mehmet Ali Erbil

Development of a Novel Platform for Greater Situational Awareness in the Urban Military Terrain

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and the more recent war in the Gaza Strip have emphasized the need for novel platforms which provide for greater situational awareness in the urban terrain. Without intelligent systems, which can accurately provide real-time information, collateral damage to property will result, together with unnecessary civilian deaths. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that within the next decade 75% of the worlds population will be living in urban areas. This paper outlines the current state of unmanned aerial vehicles throughout the world and presents a novel design of a multiple rotary wing platform which has great potential for both military and civilian application areas.

Winning the DARPA UAVForge challenge 2012 —Team HALO

UAVForge was a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Atlantic (SSC Atlantic) initiative to leverage the exchange of ideas among an international community united through common interests and inspired by creative thought. More than 140 teams and 3500 registered citizen scientists from 153 countries participated in this year long event. From several selection rounds, a core of nine teams competed in the fly-off event and in June 2012 Team HALO from the UK was declared the winner scoring 47.7 points out of a total of 60 points, with their co-axial tri-rotor, Y6 (VTOL) small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS).