The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - The Cypher

U0205109 Wu Jinjia

The Cypher is a remote control helicopter for military surveillance. This Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is 6.5 ft diameter. It has hover capability and can endure three hours of flight when powered by a 50-horsepower class engine. It can even land on slopes of as much as 15 degrees. The Cypher can operate autonomously according to preplanned mission scenario. It is able to fly “hands-off” instead of being flown directly by a ground operator. It has the following autonomous flight modes:

• auto take-off and landing
• position hover-hold
• altitude hold
• velocity hold
• waypoint navigation
• auto return home

The Cypher operates on ducted rotors incorporated with composite structures. The enclosed rotor concept is safer than exposed UAV rotor systems as it minimizes the hazard of exposed high speed blades to ground personnel. The composite structures include the bearingless rotors, fly-by-wire flight controls, and advanced avionics. It is easy to operate and utilizes a centralized computer, called the vehicle mission processor, for execution of flight control laws, vehicle management functions, navigational computations, flight payload management and air vehicle communications. The rotors and the circular shroud surrounding them will share in providing the lift. It combines the efficiency of a ducted air stream with a coaxial advancing blade concept rotor system The Cypher determines position and navigates using a Global Positioning System. The vehicle is controlled and monitored from an integrated mobile ground station. The entire mission can be planned, executed and monitored from a single system manager display. Vehicle and payload commands, from the system manager, are relayed to the aircraft via a digital telemetry uplink. Aircraft status, mission data, test data and payload video are merged into a single data downlink signal that is transmitted to the control van. The underground control is done through a datalink. The Cypher has numerous flight demonstrations in both military and civil applications. They include ground and naval surveillance, communication relay, countermeasures missions as well as such non-defense roles as counter-narcotics, ordnance disposal, forestry, utilities, law enforcement and search and rescue. In a demonstration at the Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) site at Fort Benning, Ga., Cypher flew down streets, landed on a building's roof and strategically placed different payloads. For the U.S. Army's Autonomous Rotorcraft Testbed (ASRT) program, Cypher – with no operator input – searched and tracked man-size targets. For the U.S. Department of Energy, Cypher used magnetometers to search and locate underground structures and tunnels in Nevada. In September 1997, Cypher flew at the Army's Force Protection Equipment Demonstration in Virginia. So far this air vehicle has already accumulated about 400 flight hours at Sikorsky’s Development flight Centre.

References:

http://cache.ucr.edu/~currie/roboadam.htm http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/cypher.htm