Alava Ingenieros offers a comprehensive solution to equip UAVs with hyperspectral and multispectral cameras

Álava Engineers, specialist in advanced technologies to cover a broad set of needs both in the fields of public and private security as well as in the fields of National Defense and its associated institutions, will take advantage of the second edition of the Spanish Summit of Unmanned Systems – UNVEX’12, to show off its hyperspectral and multispectral cameras, Designed for use in the harshest environments (UAVs for example).

Alava Engineers will be present at UNVEX'12, “The Spanish Summit of Unmanned Systems”, which is celebrated from 23 al 26 April at the Auditorium Hotel in Madrid, where it will present its pioneering complete comprehensive hardware solution, software and services to equip UAVs with hyperspectral and multispectral cameras. With this solution the user can acquire, calibrate, correct and post-process raw data obtained during flights with UAV/UAS or manned aircraft (small planes, helicopters) to obtain hyperspectral reflectance cubes in a simple and direct way.

This comprehensive solution has been developed and validated thanks to a collaboration agreement between Quantalab (Laboratorio de Métodos de Investigación en Teledetección Cuantitativa del IAS – Sustainable Agriculture Institute, CSIC, Spain), directed by Pablo Zarco, a global benchmark with more than a decade of continuous research in this field. One of the main virtues of this complete solution is that it can be equipped either on UAVs or UAS with small payloads. (2-3 Kg) and great deployment capacity in any terrain, as in conventional manned aircraft.

The most common applications are precision agriculture (water stress and risk management, pigment concentration, early detection of crop diseases, etc.); mining (mineral mapping, analysis of quarries and excavations); precision mapping; the environment (detection of contaminants or water) and security and defense.

This complete and comprehensive solution is composed of a hardware package including UAV/UAS (optional), hyperspectral camera, inertial unit (IMU) (of different benefits depending on the maximum payment load of the UAS), processing unit, storage unit for images and associated data, and batteries, connection cables etc.; a software package including control routines, Synchronization and acquisition of all equipment pre-installed in the processing unit, and complete image post-processing software to obtain hyper/multispectral reflectance cubes from raw data acquired during flight; and a package of services including radiometric calibration of the hyperspectral camera, complete training in the use of the system and installation and commissioning.