UA Vision LLC, a manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicles, is teaming with other companies in Dayton to showcase its UAS, equipped with cameras and radio-frequency identification tags, for potential government and commercial customers around the country.
The three-employee company, which builds UAS weighing between 4 and 50 pounds in a shop at Dayton’s Tech Town complex, is working with its partners to market the sensor-fitted aircraft for use in disaster-relief missions or in taking close-up research looks at thunderstorms. The planes can be built with polystyrene foam cores and synthetic skins, light enough to be launched by hand or from a small catapult.
The goal is to win contracts that could support more widespread production of the UAS in the Dayton area, and ultimately create jobs, said Donald Smith, leader of UA Vision. “We’re trying to stay alive, to develop capacity, so we’ll be ready when the market develops,” Smith said.
In early November, he and company colleague John McNees, who flies the small planes, demonstrated the capabilities of their 8-pound Spear plane at a experimental session in which companies showed their wares to representatives of U.S. military and civilian agencies at Camp Roberts National Guard Base, Calif. The UAS was fitted with an RFID tag that could allow the plane to communicate with RFID tags on the ground, and could aid searches for missing people or help authorities track developments on the ground during emergency responses.
Mark Herres, chief executive officer of Englewood-based Builders Development Group, who is working with UA Vision on the RFID project, said he is hopeful it will appeal to the armed forces and civilian emergency-response agencies. He and UA Vision are to participate, along with other companies, in a follow-up demonstration for government representatives in mid-February at Avon Park, Florida.
In a separate effort, Smith and McNees flew their Spear UAS in early September off a mountain in New Mexico in a demonstration of flying into a thunderstorm for weather research. UA Vision is teaming with the San Diego-based Quasar Federal Systems company in that project for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which commissions research projects for the Defense Department.
UA Vision and its sister company, Co-Operative Engineering Services Inc., are involved with other companies, the Air Force and Dayton-area colleges in efforts to build UAV industry expertise and obtain federal approval for UAS test-flying airspace in the region.
Source: Dayton Daily News