Advanced Optical Systems

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Business World | May 2015 90
program, then as part of the Hubble Servic-
ing Mission 4 and eventually for rendezvous
and docking applications for the Interna-
tional Space Station.
Today, the company is applying the
HERMES system to robotic helicopters,
giving them the ability to pickupand deliver
external sling loadsautonomously.A prime
example of this technology in action is the
K-MAX helicopter, which has been oper-
ating in Afghanistan for a number of years
now and has "moved millions and millions
tons of cargo."
"You basically position a receptacle and a tar-
get within the pickup zone that's attached to
a piece of cargo and mount the sensors on
the helicopter," explained Centamore."The
helicopter flies in, finds the cargo using our
sensor which provides navigational feedback
to the helicopter so that it can connect to
the piece of cargo autonomously, and then
it flies off to its delivery location, which also
has a target so that the helicopter can au-
tonomously deliver it to that exact location
within a could basically deliver it to
the back of a pickup truck, so it's very, very
exact navigation." The HERMES system has
also been used for autonomous landing using
the same target/sensor interaction used for
delivering external sling loads, which shows
the tremendous potential for the future of
the technology.
AWARD-WORTHY
INNOVATIONS
Not only has AOS impressed some of the
world's most powerful organizations, but it
has alsoearnedplentyof industry recognition
in the process. The company'sAIRprintcore
technology received a 'Best of What's New
Award' from Popular Science in 2014 as one
of 100 winners selected among thousands
of entrants. AIRprint also won Gold in the
'Innovative Services Safety/Security' cate-
gory at the 2015 Edison Awards, while the