Unmanned Systems Asia 2017

A few days ago (April 2017) I visited Unmanned Systems Asia 2017, an event organized by Experia in the Changi Exhibition Centre of Singapore. This year the event was mainly focused on drones, although it was possible to see a few other non-flying unmanned systems.

I made a very "home made" non-professional video of the event, just to give you all a general idea on what some companies and institutions where exhibiting there.

If you could not see the video clic here: https://youtu.be/pAlHVwIoyS8

Although I am sorry to say I found the event a bit limited on the number of exhibitors, I found some interesting players anyway:

EWATT Technology, a Chinesse company that produce fixed-wing and rotary-wing systems, showed their big drones, mainly for industrial and security purpose. The company employs more than 300 people, including more than 80 R&D and technical support engineers in Chinese HQ, and two R&D centers located in Italy. EWATT has filed over 500 patents related to UAV embedded technologies in China, with a large number already approved The company showed a coaxial octocopter (EWZ-S8), but is also working on a gas-powered variable-pitch quadcopter (EWZ-110) with an expected endurance of 2h and 20kg payload.

ST Engineering (Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd), an integrated engineering group providing solutions and services in the aerospace, electronics, land systems and marine sectors, ranks among the largest companies listed on the Singapore Exchange, and is one of Asia’s largest defence and engineering groups. Between the companies that form such group are: ST Kinetics, ST Dynamics, ST Aerospace, ST Marine and ST Electronics. Therefore they showed solutions from the different companies of the group. ST Aerospace showed their U-Star X quatrotor, specially

designed for urban and open terrain applications. and U-Star Y coaxial hexacopter. ST Dynamics showed their Autonomous Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Environments solution, based on a set of four-wheeled robots (Husky A200 developed by the Canadian company Clearpath Robotics), The solution is able to create a collaborative 3D map in real time, using 3D laser scanners and GNSS systems among others. They expect to have the solution ready for first trials within one year.

Lockheed Martin is one of the largest companies in the aerospace, defense, security, and technologies industry. This company offers a set of unmanned systems for underwater, air and land. In this event they showed their Indago quadrotor unmanned aerial system and also presented their recently launched Hydra Fusion, a photogrammetry software able to produce 3D maps in real time using a standard laptop.

Elbit Systems is an Israel-based international defense electronics company with more than 12.000 employees, engaged in a wide range of programs throughout the world. The company, operates in the areas of aerospace, land and naval systems, command, control, communications, computers, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ("C4ISR"), unmanned aircraft systems ("UAS"), advanced electro-optics, electro-optic space systems, EW suites, signal intelligence ("SIGINT") systems, data links and communications systems and radios. They showed some small unmanned aerial systems, including their well known Da-Vinci multirotor.

Let's see if for next year we could get some other players I missed, like... yeah, I think I will keep those names for myself ;-)