The Institute - June 2020 - TI15

STARTUP SETS
DRONES ON DEFROST
UBIQ AEROSPACE BRINGS THE FIRST
DRONE DEICING SYSTEM TO MARKET

n 2013 Ph.D. candidate Kim L. Sorensen and his advisor,
IEEE Senior Member Tor Arne Johansen, talked with U.S.
Coast Guard representatives about a relatively new
challenge for the military: the buildup of ice on drones and
other unmanned aerial vehicles. UAVs weren't outfitted
with protection to eliminate ice buildup.
Sorensen, tasked with finding a solution, determined that
using electrothermal technology and algorithms to autonomously detect and remove ice from UAVs while in flight was
the best approach. That became the focus of his Ph.D. project.
At the time, he was pursuing a doctorate at the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology's Center for Autonomous Marine Operations and Systems, in Trondheim.
Johansen, then and now a principal researcher at the
center, is director of its UAV laboratory.
From that meeting, Sorensen says, interest in his work
picked up. In 2014 he went to NASA's Ames Research Center in
Mountain View, Calif., as a visiting researcher to continue his
work. Sorensen built the first prototype of his system there
ILLUSTRATION BY

Gluekit

with the help of the center's scientists. From left: UBIQ
The prototype was tested in 2015 on founders Kim
L. Sorensen, IEEE
board a UAV that flew out of the Joint Senior Member Tor
Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a U.S. Air Arne Johansen, and
Kasper T. Borup
Force facility in Anchorage.
Since then, Sorensen says, the technology has been tested regularly in wind
tunnels and on board UAV flights.
In 2017 Johansen, Sorensen, Sorensen's Ph.D. classmate Kasper T. Borup, and the university's technology
transfer office founded UBIQ Aerospace in Trondheim to
commercialize the technology, which is now called D*ICE.
Borup specialized in automation and robotics at the university, and his research interests include nonlinear control
systems and their applications to UAVs.
Sorensen is the startup's CEO, Borup is its CTO, and Johansen is a technical advisor and a member of UBIQ's board.
The company has delivered its electrothermal panel for wings to
its first customer and is in the process of test flying it now.
>>>
THE INSTITUTE

JUN 2020

TI-15

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The Institute - June 2020

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