16 August 2019

TADTE 2019: NCSIST unveils Fire Cardinal mini-UAV

by Kelvin Wong

Taiwan’s National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) has unveiled a new entry to its Hong Que (Cardinal) family of tactical mini-unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) at the 2019 Taipei Aerospace & Defense Technology Exhibition (TADTE), which is being held in Taipei from 15 to 17 August.

Under development by the institute’s Aeronautical Systems Research Division (ASRD), the Fire Cardinal is being referred to as an “air-to-ground assault” UAV, although a NCSIST spokesperson told Jane’s that the vehicle is being used as a testbed for object recognition and precision targeting and tracking technologies. Work is understood to have commenced in early 2019 using internal funding.

The Fire Cardinal mini-unmanned aerial vehicle can be equipped with an explosive payload, although it is currently being used to test AI-enabled target acquisition and targeting technologies. (IHS Markit/Kelvin Wong)

According to specifications released by NCSIST, the Fire Cardinal measures 1.2 m long and 0.6 m high and features a 1.2 m long wingspan. It has a maximum take of weight (MTOW) of 6 kg and typically carries a passive multispectral electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) payload that is supported by indigenously developed machine learning/artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.

The air vehicle is powered by two wing-mounted podded brushless electric motors, although NCSIST declined to disclose specifics on its flight performance.

“We are integrating state-of-art object detection and multi-object tracking algorithms which will take us one step further to realising a fully automatic and highly intelligent system,” the spokesperson said.

“Multi-object tracking is a big challenge due to noisy detection sets and frequent switches caused by occlusion and visual similarities among nearby objects,” he explained, noting that current approaches typically centre on data association techniques based on onboard algorithms.

Taiwan’s National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) has unveiled a new entry t...

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