INLSA

Cape Town 081111 Lubabalo Matshoba with the Guardian 2 is the second generation Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Designed and Maunfactured by our technology Partner, the CPUT Adaptronics AMTL. picture : neil baynes Reporter : Ilsa

ILSE FREDERICKS

Education Writer

THE CAPE Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) has launched a company that designs and manufactures unmanned aerial vehicles used for surveillance.

Fitted with cameras, the “aircraft” can reach 60km/h to 130km/h and will be used for surveillance of forest fires, border and coastal patrols and anti-poaching patrols.

The new company, called UAV-SysCo, will be entering the market with two models, one micro and one mini.

The aerial vehicles are being produced at CPUT’s Adoptronics Advanced Manufacturing Technology Laboratory, a unit started in 2007 with funding from the provincial government and the Department of Science and Technology.

Professor Oscar Philander, the unit head and the company’s chief executive, said each vehicle operated at an optimal height of 1 000m and weighed 2.5kg to 13kg.

“We designed the first vehicle as mechanical engineers and not as aeronautical engineers, so it was about 80 percent overweight. We went back to the drawing board and four months later made an airframe that met the design criteria.”

New variants were designed every year, with researchers trying to improve the flight performance and characteristics.

“Sometimes we worked 24 hours a day, we didn’t take university holidays. The worst was to have something go wrong during flight testing. Losing a plane is like losing a child.”

Last year, they started development of an aerial vehicle for surveillance.

Philander said that earlier this year the unit was asked to submit a tender to another African country.

He said the research also provided on-the-job training for students.

“Gone are the days of doing a theoretical design on paper and you get passed on that. For us, it is critical to go through the entire process of design to prototype, testing (it) and handing (it) over to the client.”

ilse.fredericks@inl.co.za