HAWKEYE have released their latest UAV designed for the agriculture market post successful trials in New Zealand.  The RQ-84Z series UAV is a laminar flow UAV designed for photogrammetry payloads and now carries TWO Sony Nex-5 series cameras with specialist lenses both imaging simultaneously for NDVI capture.  This adaptation, along with other design improvements such as RTK GPS have improved overall efficiency for agricultural market acquisition.  The ease of launch, parachute recovery,  integration with ArcGIS and robust Kevlar construction provide a commercial grade solution for Agribusiness.  Impending upgrades include  a 40 megapixel sensor upgrade in early 2014.

From our company Blog:

2012 ESRI International User Conference, San Diego:

Hawkeye UAV was fortunate enough to be invited to exhibit at this year’s ESRI GIS User Conference in San Diego. With a sponsored booth in a prime position in Hall D we could only say "Yes, thank you!" So in late July, Rowland and myself made our way across from New Zealand. Rowland left the week prior to the UC in order to attend the preconference seminars, conduct some meetings and make our technology accessible to the Survey community. Along with the two of us, and providing their expertise on the photogrammetry processing were Luke, Hayden and Sheryl from Areo (http://areo.co.nz/).

The first big coup was ESRI’s invitation to have our display bird on the main stage for the duration of the weekend and Plenary sessions at the start of the Conference. To put all this in perspective, the "main stage" is in front of a room in the region of 200m long, and is backed by three HUGE screens. The room hosted 16,000 people at one time, so a lot of GIS professionals saw our UAV onstage and some of our data as part of the plenary presentations.

In fact many folks mentioned to us at the booth that they’d seen the AreoHawk onstage and asked about the content in the keynote presentation. It was both humbling an exciting to have our technology out there in front of the world.

RQ-84Z AreoHawk is now is service in NZ after a months trial in Canada and NZ.  We are acquiring 8 Sq/km in 36 min from 400-600 AGL and endurance 90 min+ -in 25 km 'hr winds.

Sensor is Sony Nex-5, Migrating to Sony Nex-7 in one week (when they arrive).  Our Terrain Aware IP allows for dynamic operations factoring in wind direction, DEM, overlap requirements and acquisiton rate depending on ground speed.

No need for catapult.  Parachute recovery (automated) and unique Pitot tube that doesnt get blocked in rain.

Hand launch is very solid - 70 km/hr in 1 sec and high angle climb to loiter altitude.

Our photogrammetry software AREOGRAPH hi density DSM including ground control and tone, colour matched ortho mosaics delivered in 1 Sq/km tiles pixel alignment and most nadir images promyted removing parallax error.

www.hawkeyeuav.com

UAV Optimsed for Photogrammetry Acquisition

Arc Globe.

xyz Point cloud DEM

6 cm GSD Orthorectified imagery.