Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International to hold conference in August

When it comes to robotics, only R2D2 and C3PO are more popular than the newest breeds of unmmaned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Those trying to stop illegal immigration are pleased to find them deployed on the Mexican border (even if they sometimes crash, as we reported in May, leading to greater congressional oversight), while others see great value in post-disaster recovery efforts, helping to reconnoiter otherwise inaccesible areas. Militaries worldwide see great potential, especially after the U.S. Army showed them off in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, disturbingly, even the most unsavory international characters find they add value: of the many innovations used by Hezbollah in its recent war with Israel were two UAVs, one of which was fully loaded with explosives and heading toward an Israeli city, before the Israeli Air Force shot it down.

Planes are not the end all and be all of unmanned systems. Robots, as law enforcement agencies know, are useful for bomb detection among other things, and there is hope that unmanned boats can assist navies with littoral patrols and mine detection (though one can not help but worry, after the destruction of an Israeli warship by a Hezbollah rocket, that these, too, will come to nefarious purposes.)

Despite advances being made in propulsion and miniaturization, pulling all these different modalities into a single operational system remains a challenge.

One interesting product line to be displayed at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) Unmanned Vehicles 2006 Symposium and Exposition, to be held 29-31 August 2006 in Orlando, Florida, belongs to Innova Robotics. In addition to showing off its own fleet of unmanned vehicles, the company will demonstrate the capabilities of its communication and control systems, which “employ a state-of-the-art user interface and can support the integration, coordination, and communication among multiple unmanned land, sea, and air vehicles and among multiple cooperating control units to enable distributed communications and data sharing between the vehicles and among mission controllers.”

According to AUVSI, the conference program “will consist of 72 technical sessions and 40 poster boards covering government program updates, technology briefings and operational reports representing air, land and maritime unmanned systems.”

-sign up for the conference at the AUVSI Web site; read more about Innova Robotics in this press release; read more about unmanned boats in this C4ISR Journalreport; read more about Hezbollah’s UAVs here