WaterRescueDrones Project

Our consortio member FH-Westküste organized a participation at the first Initiative-Bildverarbeitung e.V. event in 2026 at Orthodrone GmbH on 29th of January. Gerald Peklar from NXP presented the project and used hardware as well as Frieder Jesper from NXP gave an insight on NXP's edge compute and edge AI solutions. Related  LinkedIn posting

On October 29th and 30th NXP participated the Flight Test Convention 2025 @ Cochstedt Airport, DLR national UAS test center. WaterRescueDrones project and the demonstrator has been shown. Also a live demonstration of UWB guided precision landing has been performed with one of the project's demonstrator drone by Tim Hadler and Gerald Peklar of NXP. Video of UWB guided precision landing. Landing pad is 2x2m with the UWB ground target centered.   Review by DLR on the event   h ttps://www.dlr.de/de/ux/aktuelles/nachrichten/rueckblick-auf-die-6-uav-flight-test-convention-in-cochstedt

You may wonder what we do if we don't fly at the beach with the big drone testing the overall state of development. The answer is quite simple: It's a lot of SW development done with bench testing, followed by system functionality verification by flight testing. Due to the complexity of our system   we are flight testing every drone software change with a minimum of 10 flight hours on one of our small test drones before applying it on the project demonstrator .  Example flight testing UWB guided precision landing The small test drone uses mainly the same NXP electronic components we have on the big X25 - NXP Auriol MR-VMU-RT1176 (NXP i.MX RT1176) FMU running PX4 NavQplus (NXP i.MX8Mplus) companion computer running ROS2 Jazzy, connected via T1 ethernet to FMU MR-T1ETH8 (NXP SJA1110) 10port T1 ethernet switch FETtec ESC60A pro (NXP S32K146) controlled triple redundant via Dshot and 2x CAN bus Consider-IT OBU (NXP SAF5400 & i.MX8) communication unit Murata 2BP UWB development...

On September 11, 2025, the first "Drone Barcamp" took place at the West Coast University of Applied Sciences in Heide. Jointly organized by UAM-InnoRegion SH, the DE-DK ​​Interreg project ARTEMIS, and Windrove, the event brought together around 90 participants from SMEs, universities, and public institutions.   What makes the Barcamp special: no pre-defined agenda – the participants themselves determine the topics! In 16 interactive sessions, current issues and future scenarios in unmanned aviation were discussed, including:  UWB technology for drones including live demo by NXP Long-range drones & hydrogen technology Wind & emissions measurement with drones Safety in uncontrolled airspace (BVLOS) Vocational training & further education for the drone economy Funding & export controls Drone ports & landing infrastructure Public acceptance  During breaks, participants had the opportunity to visit the booths of various exhibitors.   The "WaterRescue...

Successful test of ML based object detection  The WRD team was out recently testing ML based object detection on real hardware. Supported by DLRG team we had a windsurfer and a kite surfer placed in the water. Task of our NXP Auriol drone equipped with SIYI ZT-30 gimbal camera and NXP NavQ+ (i.MX8M-plus) with internal NPU was to detect the objects in water and deliver a live video stream of both RGB and IR camera to the ground control van. Object detection worked very well. Only challenge was the limited bandwith of the LTE connection because we streamed three (3) RTSP videos live (IR, RGB and AI-ML output). Special thanx for acting as "rescue targets" floating in the water for several hours to Christian Lautenbach from kiteguide-spo.de  and Kevin Peklar. Looking forward to the next successful test.

Demonstration flight  (c) 2025, quadmovr NXP did some demonstration flights to BOS organisation showcasing the capabilities of the HHLA-Sky X25 drone based on NXP technology used in the project. The RGB and IR camera system is very capable to be used for search missions on land as well.