Riga Technical University (RTU) Institute of Transport Vehicle Technologies, is working on a new concept for an unmanned micro aircraft

 “Entrepreneurs from Latvia and abroad have already shown interest in our development of a micro-class multipurpose unmanned aircraft. The main goal of the project is to develop an unmanned aircraft that can monitor surroundings and buildings in order to increase the effectiveness of control and protection and to decrease the costs for that. We will patent our unmanned aircraft construction, the innovative composite materials we use and the development of the technologies. We are also planning to develop two European Union prototypes and one European Union trade mark,” says professor Aleksandrs Urbahs who received financial support from ERAF for the project “unmanned aircraft complex development and aircraft industrial prototype creation for Latvian economy development purposes.”

The unmanned aircraft was already mentioned in a research about development of perspective technologies that was conducted by the institute of economics of the Latvian Academy of Sciences “possibilities for military industrial development in Latvia”. Professor Urbahs stresses that the aircraft can also be widely used in non-military fields, for example in agriculture, to monitor the condition of the environment and other fields.

Until November 2013, a group of researchers (23 participants un 5 volunteers) from the RTU Institute of Transport Vehicle Technologies will be working on two prototype models of the unique unmanned aircraft. “We have to develop an unmanned aircraft that can fly for at least two hours. Currently these kind of aircrafts can fly no longer than 30 minutes. One of the models that we are developing will hopefully have a radius of 25 and the other one of 75  kilometres. This means that we can provide, for example, video monitoring, photography and environmental monitoring,” says the project manager. He adds that the new model of the unmanned aircraft should be easy to produce. It weighs no more than 5 kilo’s and it is proportionally cheap and ecological safe (It works with an electric motor and does not pollute the environment. It works rather quiet).

For example, information about a forest fire or about an accident with a yacht at sea can be filmed or photographed by a camera on the aircraft and transferred to a computer. Never before such aircrafts were used in Latvia, but Lithuania is using radiographic aircrafts that can only fly in a range the eyes can reach.

Latvian researchers have already made several models of an unmanned aircraft that are in use currently, so they have quite some experience.

In short:

The ERAF project “unmanned aircraft complex development and aircraft industrial prototype creation for Latvian economy development purposes ”:
The total amount of costs for the project are EUR 653’200 , financial support from ERAF is EUR 604’210  (92,5%). Almost all people working at the institute will be involved in realizing the project. It is planned that they publish 40 articles in renown foreign media about the project in the next year.

Unmanned aircraft production

Most successful countries are USA, Israel, Canada, Germany and France.
In the past few years unmanned aircraft projects are intensively being supported by the state in Estonia, Lithuania, Belorussia and Russia.
In 2008, 59 countries were building unmanned aircrafts.
In the USA, the amount spend for research for unmanned aircrafts is 75% from the total costs worldwide.
Experts predict that in the next 10 years every year the turnover in the unmanned aircraft field will be 30 billion dollars. Besides that the European market, except for the military unmanned aircrafts, will account for 6 billion dollars, which puts the European Union second in line after the USA.

This information was compiled from an article in Latvian newspaper “Latvijas Avīze”.

More information about the project can be obtained at:
Riga Technical University (RTU)
Institute of Transport Vehicle Technologies