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Applanix, a mobile mapping and positioning company, has introduced a new product that enables major improvements in unmanned airborne mapping: the Applanix APX-15 UAV GNSS-Inertial System. The announcement was made at InterGeo, being held this week in Berlin

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The APX-15 UAV is designed to maximize the efficiency of mapping from small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) by reducing — or even eliminating — Ground Control Points (GCPs). Sidelap is also significantly reduced, increasing the area flown per mission. The Applanix APX-15 UAV provides performance in a small package and, with the included POSPac UAV post-mission software, produces a highly accurate position and orientation solution for direct georeferencing of cameras, LIDARs and other UAS sensors, the company said.

“Applanix has recognized the need to provide the growing UAS mapping market with the same highly efficient solutions that it pioneered for airborne mapping over 15 years ago,” said Joe Hutton, Director of Inertial Technology and Airborne Products at Applanix Corporation. “We are offering a cost-effective solution that meets the size, weight, power and cost requirements of small UAS, and maintains the Applanix pedigree for quality and performance.”

The APX-15 UAV, measuring just 6 cm x 6.7 cm and weighing only 60 grams, features a high-performance, survey-grade, multi-frequency GNSS receiver and low-noise MEMS inertial sensors all on a single board. The Applanix IN-Fusion GNSS-Inertial integration technology runs directly on the GNSS receiver, resulting in an ultra-compact design, while superior performance is achieved from the inertial sensors using the Applanix SmartCal software compensation technology.

APX-15 UAV is expected to be available worldwide in the first quarter of 2015 through the Applanix sales channel.With 220 channels, the APX-15 UAV tracks all available GNSS satellite signals including GPS L1/L2/L2C/L5 and GLONASS L1/L2, QZSS, BeiDou and Galileo, and provides a highly accurate post-mission and real-time RTK GNSS-inertial position and orientation solution to support guidance and control, precision landing and sensor geo-referencing.