Posted by Duncan on January 07, 2004 at 15:55:31:
In Reply to: UAV sensor payloads posted by Neil Dickson on December 16, 2003 at 03:56:07:
It's interesting the number of posts that appear along these lines. Its hard to get a real idea of UAV costs until such projects are properly scoped.
As for payloads - does anyone really know what payloads they want to carry? Do the payloads need to be certified? What is the certification basis? What type of sensor do you need for SAR, powerline/crop inspection etc. Do these sensors exist? What is the level of human cognition required to detect items of interest or faults and can this be done with onboard processing?
A cheap payload that would be useful for high altitutude survey UAVs would be Color still cameras - these seem relatitvely cheap on their own, under US$100 for a megapixel unit. However more useful units such as Infrared detectors (eg for finding people) are a little more scarce as they're not utilised widely (ie Mobile Phones, digital cameras etc). Add to this the cost of sufficient image processing to reduce the datalink bandwidth requiremens and operator input and the costs add up further. A mil spec'd FLIR turret costs upwards of a few million dollars and could only be carried on large (<150kg) UAVs.
Obviously the cost of the UAV will rise exponentially with size and weight - and the bigger the sensor, the bigger the UAV, more certification requirements etc etc. Until vendors start developing UAV specific sensors, then the UAV market will have to live with COTS sensors that are larger and heavier than are really required.
My 2c. Id be interested to hear other peoples comments.