St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, December 1, 2006 - On November 23rd, 2006, Provincial Aerospace Limited (PAL) and Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) successfully completed the first commercial uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) flight in Canadian airspace. PAL, a St. John's based provider of fixed wing aircraft based maritime surveillance and Memorial University's Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science are partners in a UAV research and development program. The Remote Aerial Vehicle for Environmental Monitoring (RAVEN) project aims to develop UAV payloads to address the specific operating needs of harsh ocean and arctic environments.
UAV technology represents the new frontier of surveillance operations and this partnership between PAL and MUN provides the mechanism to demonstrate the capabilities of UAV's for a number of applications including pollution and illegal fishing surveillance. "The benefit of operating unmanned aircraft in harsh ocean environments such as the North Atlantic and the Arctic is obvious," said Mr. Brian Chafe, Provincial Aerospace's Chief Operating Officer. "This technology represents the future of air surveillance and with the deployment of these UAV's, PAL has become the first Canadian aviation company to receive a Transport Canada permit to operate UAV's in Canadian airspace".
Memorial's Dean of Engineering, Dr. Ray Gosine, agrees that the application of UAV's for offshore surveillance is an exciting frontier for Newfoundland and Labrador. "Memorial University has invested considerably research efforts into the development of autonomous vehicles, including unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV's) and telerobotic mining vehicles. Our partnership with PAL in developing competency in this technology is essential to the future growth of the NL private sector that has a commercial interest in providing marine and arctic surveillance capabilities."
"The partnership between Provincial Aerospace and Memorial University brings together two highly respected organizations and demonstrates that there is a remarkable range of innovation taking place in our province's private sector," noted Keith Stoodley, Senior Vice President - Marketing with PAL.
The UAV's maiden flight occurred at the Clarenville airstrip on November 23. The UAV, an Aerosonde Mk-4, flew for approximately two hours before landing safely. Three additional flights were conducted over the following three days using two aircraft culminating in a four (4) hour maritime surveillance flight in Random Sound.
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