MORGANTOWN, W.Va., 21 Dec. 2006. Small unmanned aircraft can now be configured to select and transmit only the most useful data, rather than streaming all data back to military personnel. This newfound ability was successfully demonstrated in a flight test of unmanned vehicles equipped with on-board sensor processing capabilities developed by Augusta Systems.

Augusta Systems, a provider of technologies to reduce deployment and management costs of sensor systems, networks, and applications, participated in the Naval Air Systems Command flight test, along with representatives from AAI Corporation, a United Industrial Corporation subsidiary, and others. The flight tests were held at a National Aeronautics and Space Administration facility on Wallops Island, Va.

"These vehicles can now act with greater intelligence within network-centric operations, processing and transmitting the most important sensor data," says Patrick Esposito II, president and chief operating officer of Augusta Systems. "This is a breakthrough for military personnel and a force multiplier since it allows the unmanned systems to do the data processing that ground personnel would normally perform. Instead of functioning as flying cameras, the vehicles become flying computers, capable of supporting a host of intelligent functions and algorithms."

For the flight tests, the company's sensor processing devices were coupled with code produced through its SensorBridge software and used on-board AAI's Aerosonde Mk 4 vehicles. In network-centric applications, SensorBridge can power data interfacing, data filtering, and data fusion functions.

The Augusta Systems technologies enabled the vehicles to process video sensor data on-board the aircraft and transmit only relevant data back to personnel on the ground. Normally, the vehicles would stream all data back to the ground personnel, who would then have to sift through the data looking for useful information.