Unmanned Aerial Systems Advance Potential

Good evening everyone. My name is Brandon. I, along with a small crew of aviation and IT professionals started a company here in Atlanta (Solaris UAS) that focuses in research, design, development, of Unmanned Aerial Systems which include both fixed wing and rotor based vehicles.

Although our main client focus is dedicated to power company line health assessment, thermal solar panel analysis, and livestock monitoring, we have planned to dedicate a branch of the company to UAS Search And Rescue.

We are still in the design phase of this new venture but one thing that I personally am set on is incorporating laser technology with the new design. The way I picture this at this moment is an on board laser that will be remotely controlled via a sensor operator which is someone separate than the pilot. The lasers main focus is to shoot a beam from the aircraft at anywhere between 2,000ft to 5,000ft to the ground in the general proximity of the objective so that ground personal can see and therefore proceed to the "objective".

My team and I are knowledgeable about all aspects of mounting the systems and aiming them. However nome of us have any background in the technology of laser construction.

Any helpful advice from any of you would be extremely appreciated!

Laser from above? Yikes... :tsk:

I suppose it could be done in a controlled environment, but a laser mounted on an aircraft pointing downward just sounds purely dangerous in a public environment and you may be held responsible and a liability if someone's sight were to be damaged by this flying laser machine, and it would have to be relatively high powered to be able to be seen from that distance, and even more powerful during the daylight.

Your use for the laser is a bit vague, but it sounds like you want it to be targeting something. Is there really no other way to achieve this under your circumstances than to use a laser?

Also, good luck finding a laser with respectable divergence at 5k ft. I'd recommend trying to familiarize yourself with lasers and the technology behind them as well as their behavioral aspects, it's kind of bad etiquette to come on asking how to do this with lasers and not know anything about them, because then you don't really know what you're doing or what you're talking about. No offense intended, just advice :beer:

Putting the danger aside, you're going to need some sort of focusing system to make sure the laser is visible on the ground. It'll have to be done with either preprogrammed math or an on board camera and some clunky optics.

I'd say your best bet would be with a high power green laser if you're going for visibility. A 532nm DPSS module might be better for divergence, but a 520nm direct diode laser might be better for reliability.

You need to study the NOHD and you will discover that anything visible from a perpendicular stance will also be too powerful to be safe unless you use eye safe wavelength lasers and NV to view, such as military A-10's target a spot designated by a ground troop with an IR laser designator in the safe range.

An eye safe laser in the 1500nm range could be used to range the target spot and with GPS could identify the spot to ground crew via of handheld interface, but a visible marking beam seem with the naked eye is much too dangerous unless you know the NOHD, but even then the GPS interface would be better, otherwise you must defocus for every instance and in daylight it's just not practical.

You would be better off with marker drones that are painted day glow orange or illuminated at night that hover over the target area to mark it, a flashing strobe on the drone could show ground workers that it is marking a spot and it could hover over at a safe distance to indicate the spot, but use a flashing strobe that can be seen from ground to air, that's your advantage, a beam is not practically viewed at any distance from any angle, its limited to looking down the beam.

Beams look brightest coming at you and 2nd brightest going away, looking down the beam such as a targeting laser, but from the side they disappear quickly.

Read also about military IR designators, but a flashing strobe will be your best bet, or hand held GPS interface.