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25 MBiz May 2014 I N T E R L A K E INTERLAKE ARBORG & DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ASHERN & DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE ERIKSDALE & DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE FISHER BRANCH CHAMBER OF COMMERCE RIVERTON & DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE TEULON & DISTRICT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE >> Start practising your pronunciation. The 125th Icelandic Festival of Manitoba, Islendingadagurinn, promises 125 events in Gimli Aug. 1-4, and will include the unveiling of a commemorative stone. The festival's annual Viking Open Golf Tournament is set for Friday, June 20 at Gimli's Links at the Lake Golf Course. This fall, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's Nordic Series will provide a musical fi nale for the anniversary year, with a performance of Kenley Kristoferson's commissioned work about the Icelandic immigrant experience. >> The curtain rises on the Gimli Film Festival July 23-27. An annual event since 2001, the festival is famous for its beach screenings with RBC Cinema Under the Stars, a full slate of fi lm shorts and features and industry programming. The board of directors is made up of chair and founder Janis Johnson, Phyllis Laing (vice chair), Ian MacPherson (treasurer), Clair Gillis (secretary), Michelle Aikenhead, Norma Bailey, Andy Blicq, Lila Goodspeed, Terry MacLeod, Mea Ramm, Devan Towers and Caelum Vatnsdal. NEW & NOTEWORTHY W hen Amazon fl oated the idea in December of using unmanned drones to deliver packages, it seemed far-fetched. But unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) already have many practical applications. For the past two decades, a Stony Mountain business has been fl ying high on the soaring success of its autopilot products. Owner Howard Loewen launched MicroPilot 20 years ago to create controllers that allow UAVs to fl y by themselves. "I've always been interested in aviation and I have a technical background," says Loewen, who has a master's degree in computer science. "I started this as a project on the side and it just kind of turned into a nice little business." The high-tech controllers are shipped around the world to 65 countries where more than 750 clients install them in their own aircraft. "We send them the brains and they come up with all the rest," Loewen says. "They buy a camera from one person. They buy bits and pieces from a variety of different companies, and they buy the thing that makes it fl y from us." To hit great heights, MicroPilot's controllers contain sensors and software on a computer board that's installed in a UAV. "Basically they communicate with software on your laptop over some sort of radio length. On your laptop, you program where you want it to go and then you send that information to the autopilot," Loewen explains. "You launch the plane or the helicopter, and it will fl y to those locations and come back and land again." When it comes to applications, the sky's the limit. UAVs have been used to monitor wildlife, wetlands and farm fi elds and they've aided in search-and-rescue operations. NASA has used MicroPilot autopilots on several projects, from fl ying blimps to collecting data on the magnetic signature of a crater in the Bolivian Amazon. One typical use is to install the device in a drone that fl ies back and forth over a small area snapping hundreds of photos. "In this case, it's basically a fl ying camera. Then they load all these pictures onto software on a laptop that puts them together into one big image," Loewen says. "Because there's so much overlap in these pictures, it can also fi gure out a full 3D terrain map of the area you fl ew over. If you're trying to monitor how you're using an area, this is very valuable data." Although Loewen was fl ying solo when he launched the business, he now employs 26 people, and the company continues to grow. "I like everything about it. Intellectually, it's a challenge. You get to meet interesting people. You get to travel the world because our customer base is everywhere," he says. "You want to go see what your customers are experiencing and learn from them so you can understand them." Prices range from a few thousand dollars up to $20,000, and MicroPilot's expertise sets the company apart from its few competitors, since there is no room for error in the industry. "It's a very unique kind of niche. If something goes wrong in the software of your phone, you just power it down and power it up again. But if something goes wrong in the software that's fl ying the plane, you have to go get a shovel and a bag and start scooping up pieces," Loewen says. "We have a lot of experience and we're making a very high-quality product. Some others are making a very inexpensive product. You can't do both." The future is not without its challenges as regulators grapple with the implications of potential applications, such as long-distance aerial surveillance. "Right now, the whole market is being held back by the fact that the regulators for Transport Canada and other organizations throughout the world haven't fi gured out how they want these things to fl y and what standards they should adhere to," he says. "But in anticipation of that, we're doing a lot of work to try to develop products to help our customers meet those standards so that they can develop sophisticated and reliable products." Brains of the operation: Founder Howard Loewen (above right) and his team at MicroPilot create the computer controllers that allow unmanned aerial vehicles to fl y. Photos by Darcy Finley MBiz_spring2014.indd Sec1:25 MBiz_spring2014.indd Sec1:25 5/14/14 8:27:25 AM 5/14/14 8:27:25 AM

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