Flight of meaning: how will Russian civilian drones develop?
Ultra—small space satellites, artificial intelligence swarms and helicopter-type drones will be shown at the Unmanned Systems forum at the Skolkovo Innovation Center. Companies from 30 countries will present their latest solutions in Moscow from August 7 to 17. SVR has given a powerful impetus to the development of unmanned technologies, but their civilian applications also have very broad prospects. A special correspondent of Izvestia was one of the first to get acquainted with the advanced developments of Russian engineers.
The world ocean in the palm of your hand
Sputnix is a company that created Russia's first private space satellite 10 years ago. To date, the number of devices designed by its employees has exceeded one hundred, 80 of them are in space orbit. By the end of 2025, another 25 will be withdrawn. It all started with a small startup based on Skolkovo, but now Sputnix is the largest organization operating in the innovation center.
As Anatoly Kopik, its commercial director, told Izvestia, the specifics of Sputnix are small and ultra—small spacecraft.
—Designing and manufacturing them is an extremely difficult task," he explained. — You need to pack all the construction materials and heavy-duty equipment into a small box. The weight of our models ranges from 2-3 to several tens of kilograms, the maximum is 200 kg. The cost of production of 1 kg of machinery is $5-10 thousand. The advantages of this compactness are lower launch costs and a large number of one—time launches. Launching into orbit takes place using Soyuz and Angara family rockets. Working time in space is 3-5 years.
Sputnix has developed several types of unified platforms, on the basis of which devices for various purposes are assembled fairly quickly. Their tasks include remote sensing of the Earth's surface, climate change, forests, agricultural lands, and urban development. An interesting option is marine monitoring, when the LCD screen displays a picture of the movement of almost all ships in the World's oceans. Tankers, dry cargo ships, fishing vessels are marked in different colors, it is noted who is going and where, the port of registry, the signal is indicated by special beacons on board. This picture allows you to track and evaluate fishing in various zones, helps to build safe routes, and identify violations of territorial waters. It is noteworthy that until 2022, foreign satellites were used in Russia for these purposes, and now ours.
The cameras on the media are super-powerful, capable of photographing any object in high resolution from a height of 500-600 km. The satellites themselves resemble unremarkable-looking boxes with protruding antennas and solar panels on the body: you won't immediately guess that this is a miracle of technology. Skolkovo specialists produce everything from software to hardware themselves. Recent projects include Svyatobor—1, designed to track forest fires, UTMN 2, to monitor the environmental situation in the Tyumen Region, and Nanoprobe-1, to study the effects of the space environment on the materials of the satellites themselves.
The new "cornhuskers"
Another area where unmanned systems are actively conquering space is agriculture. In Skolkovo, agrodrons are designed and manufactured by the Sintez company.
"We produce everything in our laboratory — frames, motors, batteries, high—resolution cameras, computers, processors," Alexey Trashcheev, General Director of Synthesis, told Izvestia. — Moreover, the same frame is designed to be used for several years, unlike its Chinese counterparts. The line of drones is called "Don-drone". There are conventional ones with four engines, two batteries and a load capacity of 80 kg. And cargo ones, including eight engines, four batteries capable of carrying 120 kg, they are capable of flying 20-30 km.
The task of agrodrones is to monitor fields, spray pesticides and fertilizers, analyze the condition of plants, in some cases — watering, sowing, that is, what is called precision farming, explains Alexey Trasheev. The purpose of this approach is to optimize resources, automate routine processes, and, as a result, increase yields.
Among the innovations that the developers have proposed is the inclusion of AI in the process.
— The key problem with agricultural cranes is incorrect landings, as a result, their frequent failure, — explains our interlocutor. — Therefore, we decided to automate this work as much as possible, to negate the human factor. Make a smart drone out of an ordinary drone. Which can, for example, identify obstacles and land safely on its own. The operator's functions are limited to battery charging and general process control. We also suggest using not one UAV, but three, which are integrated into the system and perform the work faster and more efficiently. The cost of one device is 1.5–2 million rubles, it pays off in a year.
In Asia (China, Vietnam), it is already impossible to imagine the functioning of agriculture without agro drones, there are even drone ports and transport corridors for UAVs. It is curious that in the Soviet Union, the role of such devices was performed by the famous "cornhuskers" — airplanes that were available in most large farms. Today, drones have taken their place, only with much broader functionality.
On two screws
Everyone knows quadrocopters and airplane-type drones, but few have seen an autonomous helicopter. There are really few of them in the sky. There are enterprises in Russia that have already created and implemented such a unit for use, for example, the national helicopter Manufacturing center in Tomilino. Among the private companies offering their solution is the Skolkovo Omnitech company. The development of the project has been going on for several years, now it is just at the final stage, in the next eight months the final flight tests will take place, after which the documents for certification will be submitted.
Svetlana Tortseva, Deputy Director of Omnitech LLC, told Izvestia that today the main UAV market (75%) belongs to multirotor drones. In second place is the airplane type. The third is occupied by helicopter-type UAVs.
— Our model is called the B-120. The flight altitude is 1.5 km, the maximum speed is 100 km/h, the lower temperature threshold is 35 degrees below zero, but we will lower it even more," Alexey Urbansky, the company's CEO, told Izvestia. — Load capacity — 50 kg. Fuel is gasoline plus oil. The flight range is 150 km. The main purposes of use are gas analysis on main pipeline lines. As well as cargo delivery to hard-to-reach locations. The savings compared to the cost of transportation by Mi-8 helicopter are at least two times.
85% of the components of the unmanned vehicle are of our own production. During the year, the company set a goal to reach 95%. Import substitution is a priority for Skolkovo enterprises along with advanced solutions.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
