The U.S. Naval War College is a Navy's home of thought. Established in 1884, NWC has become the center of Naval sea power both strategically and intellectually. The following issues in national security lecture is specifically designed to offer scholarly lectures to all participants. We hope you enjoy this upcoming discussion and future lectures. Well, good afternoon, and welcome to our eighth issues in national security held in the virtual world. I am Commander Gary Ross, and I'll serve as your host for today's event. To kick us off, as usual, I'd like to turn it over to Radmal Shoshana-Chapiel, president of the Naval War College, to offer her greetings. Radmal? Hello. It is so nice to be here. This is my husband, David Scoville. Most of you know already. And we are fans of and the biggest supporters of these issues in national security lecture series. We are so fortunate to see the roles swap this evening and to see our normal MC become our lecturer and to see Gary Ross step in and take over the MC role. So it's very special for us to hear more from Professor Jackson today. I encourage you to stick around for our family group and David has just a little bit to say about what we can expect just after the lecture. Yeah, I'm glad John's doing the speaking on the drones and not Gary. And Gary's doing the hosting in this case, not John. But other than that, we do have some people joining us for the benefits. Our benefits partners joining us for the family discretion group. A nice group of folks are going to jump in and tell us what they do and what their services provide us with. Most of you are familiar with Eugenie General from... Sorry, just come on. Hello, Eugenie from Humana. And as we're coming to the end of the open enrollment, she's just once again coming back to remind us. We've had her on a few times now. So this is just one more reminder for those people like me who procrastinate and still need to get their health benefits done. And then we also have, following her is Jennifer Hamill, our exceptional family member program representative. And I believe her regional person is with her as well. And lastly, we're going to try to hone in on the Marine Corps and see what they're doing during the Toys for Tots toy drive at the end of this. And we have a couple of gentlemen from the Marine Corps. I think it's a first admiral. I'm sorry, first Sergeant Marshall Cleveland and perhaps Corporal Richard Jones might be on board with us. I've not seen them yet, but we hope to check in on them and see how they're doing. So as usual, we hope to get some questions for each of our benefits partners from our spouses and participate in the dialogue. And of course, tell the guys with the Marine Corps what a great job they're doing. We think it's a wonderful cause. So there you go. That's what we've got.  All right, thank you very much, Admiral and David. For anyone just joining us, I want to reiterate that this series was originally conceived as a way to share a portion of the Naval War College's academic experience with the spouses and significant others of our student body. Over the past four years, it has been restructured to include participation by the entire Naval War College extended family to include members of the Naval War College Foundation, international sponsors, civilian employees and colleagues throughout Naval Station Newport. We will be offering 10 additional lectures between now and May, 2021, spaced about two weeks apart. An announcement will be detailing the dates, topics and speakers of each lecture will be posted by me or my public affairs office. On Tuesday, 12th January, our first lecture of the new year, we will feature an engaging discussion on national security and space with Professor David Burbach. Each event will consist of three parts, the scholarly speakers' presentation, a question and answer period and then a brief pause before we proceed to the family discussion session. The final segment is a primary interest to family members residing here in Newport and it will feature guest speakers as the Admiral and David have already mentioned. Eugenia from Humano will be speaking, Jennifer will be talking about the exceptional family member program and as David mentioned, First Sergeant Marshall Cleveland will talk to us briefly about choice for thoughts. Very important program for this time of season. And if you didn't see my email earlier today, today's lecture is a special holiday edition. All participants are highly encouraged to show their holiday spirit and wear their favorite holiday sweater. So I hope that you've put it on tonight and are willing to show us. Participants will vote for their favorite sweater and favorite ugly sweater and be nice in the comments section as well. Winners will receive a $10 Starbucks gift card. So votes will be taken in the chat window and you can vote once in each category. If you'd like to participate, please turn on your video camera. Winners will be announced at the next lecture on January 12th, good luck and have fun. Okay, on with the main event, please feel free to ask questions using the chat feature at the bottom of your Zoom window and we will address them at the conclusion of the presentation. I am very pleased to introduce our speaker, Professor John Jackson. Professor Jackson will discuss the past, present and future uses of robotic and unmanned systems, both in the military services and in private use. Known by many as the Duke of Drones, he will draw from his recent book, One Nation Under Drones. To address everything, you always wanted to know about drones but we're afraid to ask. John Jackson is a professor in the Naval War College's College of Distance Education. He teaches in the area of National Security Affairs and also serves as the program manager for the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program. And here's a tipper that professional reading program is about to be updated. So you will be seeing more official information about that program coming out of the Pentagon here shortly. A long time proponent of emerging technology, he has co-moderated one of the college's most popular elective courses entitled Unmanned Systems and Conflict in the 21st Century, since the 2009 academic year. In March of 2010, he was called to testify before the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on National Security regarding this course and the attitude of military officers towards evolving technology. In October, 2017, he was appointed as the EA Spirit Chair of Robotics and Unmanned Systems. He retired from active duty service in the US Navy at the rank of captain after 27 years of service in the logistics and graduate education fields. He has been listed in Marquis, Boussou in America since 1997. So I am pleased to pass the digital baton to my friend and colleague, Professor John Jackson. Over to you, John. Thank you very much, Gary. I apologize for that lengthy introduction, but then again, I wrote it, so I guess I shouldn't apologize too much. So it's a great pleasure to be here this evening on the other side of the platform and we'll spend a little time talking about my favorite subject, which is robots and unmanned systems. Over my shoulder here, I have Robbie the robot from the famous movie Forbidden Planet, so he will, I'm sure, join in periodically. So let me see if we can share our screen and we'll get started. Okay, are we coming through loud and clear, Gary? Okay. All right, well, what would like to say again? Loud and clear, John. Very good, thank you. Okay, well, what we're gonna do is talk about robots that fly, swim and crawl. It's a subject that you can hardly pick up a magazine or a newspaper and not see something written about that subject. Thanks, Dean. Next slide, please. As I said, you can't pick up a magazine or newspaper without finding something to do with drones and the way they're being used, both in military and in civilian applications. Next slide. The question is, is this a new idea? Well, like most things we find in the world, not really. Next slide. This is the Sperry Automatic Airplane, which was developed in 1918. And what's interesting here is this is a unmanned aircraft and the process was to load it full of bombs and explosives, point it in generally towards the target. It would take off, it would count the number of times the propeller goes around and when it got to a certain number, it would cut off the engine and it would dive on the target. Not exactly precision guided munitions, but it was used successfully, not in war because by 1918, we were out of the business but it was the first opportunity. Next slide to have a system. And in these days, it was very difficult to get any airplane in the air for any substantial amount of time and to be able to do it as a robotic aircraft with no one in the cockpit is pretty significant. So we jump ahead to World War II, next session. Next slide. And this is the Radioplane Denny Mike. Reginald Denny, who was a movie star back in that period was also an advocate of radio-controlled aircraft. And he said, you know, I think these things could probably be used for more than just playing around in the backyard.  So many times they would take a manned airplane, tow a target behind it and ask the canineers to fire at the target, not at the airplane. Didn't always happen that way. So they said, maybe we could do something on a manned basis. And so that's what they did with the Denny Mike. And they built over 7,000 of these during the Second World War and were used as targets and to tow targets and were very, very successful. Next slide. So the company that was building these had a young woman helping to assemble the drones. They sent a picture of her at work. And the photographer said, you know, that's a pretty attractive young woman. I wonder if she could do something other than build drones. Next slide. And that turned out to be Marilyn Monroe. So this is the kind of ultimate bar bet. How did Marilyn Monroe get her start? And the answer is building drones. So next slide. We hear Lady Guy is interested in getting into the drone business. And if that's the case, I think I'm gonna get out of the drone business. So next slide, please. We're gonna take a look at aerial systems, maritime systems and ground systems. And on the aerial systems, we'll start with the largest and then look down towards the smaller. We'll also look at rotary wing and look at swarming systems. So next slide. This is probably the most famous largest drone that's being flown. This is the RQ-4 Global Hawk flown by the US Air Force. It's strictly a surveillance platform. No weapons are carried, but it is able to fly for up to 30 hours at a time. In effect, it could take off from California, fly to Maine, observe what's going on there and then fly back home. So it's been a very, very successful reconnaissance platform. In fact, next slide, the Navy looked and said, we have an awful lot of ocean area that need to surveil. So perhaps we should have a burn of the Global Hawk. And so Navy has developed the Triton, the MQ-4C Triton. It's shown flying over a carrier. It does not land on a carrier, cannot take off from a carrier. It is a shore-based aircraft. Next slide. Give you an idea of the size. This is yours truly standing by one of the Triton vehicles being flown by a VUP-19, which is the unmanned squadron operated in Point Magoo, California, and other locations.  Now, when I'm doing this live, it's pretty obvious, but I want to let you know that I stand about six foot six. So if you'd play the next slide, please. This gives you an idea. Here's me and one of my fellow Naval War College professors. That's Professor Kieran Lannister from Game of Thrones. But next slide. Clearly I'm six foot six. So when you see all these drones, you'll know exactly how big they are. Next slide, please. This is the MQ-4 Reaper. The Air Force started out with the Predator, and this is the larger version of the Reaper. This you've heard an awful lot about, I'm sure. It's able to carry bombs, missiles, hellfire missiles, as you see here, and to do armed reconnaissance. Again, it can fly for up to 24 hours. And the aircraft is operated by pilots operating in the United States. So the aircraft is in the theater of operations, but the pilot is actually somewhere in the United States. Next slide. This is a photo from the Control Center at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada. And they have a hole in the ground visiting Navy guys stand in so the Air Force guys look taller. But anyway, this is a full-size version of the Predator Reaper that you can see standing there in the overhead. So next slide, please. The Navy, again, was looking at could we operate unmanned air systems from our carriers? So while we have the Triton, which operates from shore, we've developed a aircraft that could take off and land from an aircraft carrier. Next slide, please. This is an indicator of how big that aircraft is. So you see, it's about an F-18 aircraft size drone. So these things are certainly not small nor are the toys of any sort. Next slide, please. The challenging, one of the more challenging things that naval aviators are asked to do is to do air-to-air refueling. This is a photo of an unmanned aircraft behind taking fuel from a manned tanker in the front. This was part of the developmental program and the Navy was able to demonstrate the ability to do that. And so as always, when you have air-to-air refueling you significantly enhance the distance and endurance that you can operate your aircraft. Next slide. The MQ-25 Alpha is the follow-on to the UCAS, which I previously showed you. This is the program that is going to develop a air-to-air refueler. So when you saw the previous slide, it was an unmanned aircraft taking fuel. This will be an unmanned aircraft which delivers fuel with a launch from the aircraft carrier, go out, refuel the fighters and attack aircraft as they're going out to their targets and as they return back. So this is a program, Boeing is the primary builder of this aircraft. They've flown a prototype and they'll be flying additional ones here in the near future with the hope that we get actual aircraft on the aircraft carriers by about 2024 if we can make that schedule. So next slide, please. This is very briefly, this is the RQ-170 Sentinel and this is a stealth version of a drone. It's slightly smaller than the UCAS and the MQ-25 Alpha Stingray, but this is a aircraft that has flown extensively in high security situations. And if you remember the video of the Ben Laden takedown, this aircraft was flying overhead providing overhead imagery. So that's the RQ-170. Rumor has it that there is a follow-on aircraft that has been developed, but we stay at the unclassified level. But if you have the ability to use a drone, it's stealthy, that's something that could provide great benefit to our services. Next slide. So we'll go down a little bit smaller. This is the U.S. Marine Corps Blackjack. Next slide, please. And this gives you an indication of the size of the aircraft and it will launch from either at sea or it will launch from a shore and will say a surveillance to the marine forces, the ground forces. And as always you're interested in knowing what's on the other side of that hill that you potentially are gonna have to cross. And so these aircraft provide great visibility for those situations. So the Blackjack has been fielded and the Marines are having significant success with that platform. Next slide. We go a little bit smaller. This is the switchblade. And you can see on the right hand side of this photo to the operator who's looking in the control console and is flying this aircraft. It launches from that tube with compressed air and goes up and flies for about 25 minutes at a time. Now what's interesting with the switchblade is that it has a warhead in the front of it. And so it is really a loitering munition and it will fly for about 25 minutes and when you launch it, it is going to detonate. So if you do not locate a target that you desire to strike then you will fly that into a hillside but you don't want that one coming back. It's not something you wanna see coming over the horizon and where it was launched. But switchblade is very successful. Special radio forces, the ground forces. Next slide please. This is a version of the aircraft that's known as Blackwing and it's designed to launch from submarines and it will fly to the surface, take off, fly for about 25 minutes and send badges of what it see. In effect, it gives us a mariner a four to 500 foot tall parachute and visibility of what's going on around the submarine. And there's no attempt to recover that aircraft otherwise they are relatively inexpensive. And so once they've completed their mission they will crash at sea. Next slide. There's a lot of discussion these days of loyal wingman. This is known as an intratable aircraft. And the notion here is what if you had an F-35 fighter or an F-22 fighter, whatever the case might be attack aircraft and you wanted to have additional weapons if you wanted to have a wingman who could fly potentially further inland and strike the target, this would be a way to do it. So significant money is being spent to develop this intratable aircraft. And the notion is that the pilot in control of the manned aircraft would control three, four or five of these flying in formation with them and significantly expand the capabilities of those individual aircraft. Next slide. A fascinating program, this is called Gremlins. And the question here is if you have the ability to carry a number of these aircraft in a cargo aircraft as you can see in the background, launch these UAVs on manned aerial vehicles they will fly out and do the surveillance mission that you've asked them to do. Then they come back and they'll be recovered in flight by the cargo aircraft.  So it's really a remarkable capability and to be able to think that you can launch and then recover aircraft in flight is a significant capability. The design work is underway. The Gremlin aircraft have flown and they've done a tentative lock-ons to recover them and went back into the aircraft. So this will be a great capability once it's developed. Next slide. The issue of swarms is one that's of great concern. A ship can defend itself from incoming aircraft it can defend itself against incoming missiles. Can it defend against tens, dozen, hundreds of swarming UAVs? And that's a significant challenge to be able to do that. You've probably all seen swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles flying over the Olympics, flying over various stadiums and whatnot. So the capability exists to fly large quantities of these aircraft. If they were able to be militarized it could be a significant challenge for us. So we are working hard on how to deal with the swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles. Next slide, please. We'll switch here to rotary wing drones. This is a design that I certainly would not want to take on myself. It looks like a flying egg beater, if you will. But there's so many different approaches to how these rotary wing aircraft might work. And this is just one example of a multi-multi-rotor aircraft. Next slide, please. This is the NQAC fire scout. This is an unmanned helicopter. It's a converted Bell 407 helicopter, which has been converted to fly totally unmanned. There'll be an operator somewhere nearby that's operating this aircraft. It can fly surveillance missions primarily, although efforts have been developed to carry weapons in some circumstances. Next slide, please. And again, this is an indicator of the size of the aircraft. This happens to be a smaller version of the fire scout. And once again, that's the standing ruler, if you will. You'll note I'm wearing a blue shirt. I took a bunch of these photos at a conference I went to. My boss said, oh, we sent you to a five-day conference. You spent one day going around and taking pictures.  Well, number one, I don't golf. And number two, I learned a lesson that says change your shirt between photos or you're going to get yourself in trouble. So next slide, please. So this is the Roya Laki K-MAT. And this is a fascinating aircraft that it weighs 6,000 pounds and it can carry 6,000 pounds. It carries cargo slung beneath the aircraft. Greens took this to Afghanistan and had significant success. The notion is that if you're going to supply an outpost, you'll have to send in trucks with materials. The trucks can be attacked with IEDs and with other weapons. What if you didn't have to send the trucks at all? What if you could take the material and fly it directly into your forward operating base? And that's what the K-MAX was intended to do and did very successfully and moved several million pounds of cargo during this test period. So the question now is, will the Marines, will the Army continue to develop unmanned helicopters? They are doing the design work now and we'll see if they wind up in the inventory in the near future. Next slide. We go down even smaller and this is the Instant Eye Quadrotor. It's got four rotors versus why we say quadrotor. This is known as the quads for squads and the Marines will be equipped, each squad will be equipped with their own drone that they can throw into the air and fly over the hill and see what's going on before they have to deal with it. So you can see the one troop launching the aircraft and the operator there to his right. So huge numbers of these are being procured and again, the Marines have been really on the leading edge of using unmanned systems for a number of different applications. Next slide. This is the Black Hornet, which is a nano drone and this is really the smallest militarized drone that's being used. You can see the size of it there in that troopers fingers. It's designed for surveillance. You throw it in the air. It'll send back a video of what it see for 10 to 12 minutes at a time. You recover it and recharge it and you can launch it again. So a very unique device is being used by U.S. forces, Allied forces and a number of people around the world. So it looks like a toy, but it is not a toy. It does successful work and saves. So next slide. On the civilian side, there's been a lot of talk about using rotary wing craft. This is a design for a unmanned aerial vehicle taxi developed by a Chinese company. And the theory here is that you get into this machine, you touch the iPad to tell it where you wanna go, take me to Tiverton. It takes off no pilot, no parachute, just one terrified passenger. It's a interesting approach and we'll see if that comes to pass. But next slide, please. This is another version. This is called the Volocopter and this is yours truly in Singapore looking at this device. People like Uber and Lyft and others are very, very interested in using unmanned aerial vehicles to carry passengers within the United States and all around the world. So if in fact they can develop the ability to use these, you can see them landing on top of a building in downtown Los Angeles and flying you out to wherever you wanna go, dropping you off and either picks up a passenger and comes back or comes back empty and is ready to fly again. So watch this space. You'll see a lot going on in this area. Next slide. Rotary craft, there's tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of toys being used. This is a unmanned aircraft that was flown onto the lawn of the White House back in January of 2015. You may have remembered this, it was New Year's Eve and somebody decided to take their Christmas gift and see if they could fly it into the White House. And so it made an awful lot of people nervous because these are very, very difficult to defend against because they're so small, they don't have much of a radar signature. And so there's a lot of question as to how we would deal with such vehicles. So here comes the best photo of the presentation, I believe. Next slide, please. This is what I call my John Wayne picture. This is the Skywall. And so it's a counter unmanned aerial system device and what you do is you look through the viewfinder and you follow the quad rotor, whatever it is, it's coming towards you. When it goes beep, beep, beep, you press the trigger, it launches a projectile which flies out and dispenses a net and catches the drone and brings it back to Earth. It can put out a parachute and float it back gently to Earth or it can just let it crash. Either way, you've got the ability hopefully to go to it and do some forensics and see if in fact you can determine where this aircraft came from or learn how you can prevent them on another occasion from attacking. As you can see, we're on the front lawn in front of the War College and we shot down four or five drones that day and it was a highlight. Next slide. This is another counter UAS. This is called the drone killer. And the issue here is it does not use a kinetic device to knock the drone down. It uses an electronic signal to jam the operator, to jam the drone so that it cannot execute its mission. One of the problems with this approach is it also tends to jam other nearby radios and communication systems and whatnot. So it's usable in a combat environment, not necessarily in a civilian application. The previous one, Skywall that we showed conceivably could be used outside of football arena or anywhere else that the people are gathering and use it in a civilian context but for defense of that facility. Next slide. And this interesting enough is they've actually trained hawks to attack unmanned aerial vehicles and fly up there and knock them out of the sky. When this was first developed, there was concern from the SPCA and others that the hawks were gonna injure their talons.  So lots of ideas, anybody that's got a good idea as to how you can counter these things should bring that forward because it's a growth market. Okay, next slide please. So we've talked mostly about aviation so far. Let's talk a little bit about maritime systems. This is a artist conception. It's a illustration of the Sea Hunter which now exists. It is an unmanned surface vehicle, about 131 feet in length and it's designed to either track submarines underwater or to be applied to various other tasks. Sea Hunter some months back sailed from San Diego to Hawaii and back with no one on board. It understands the rules of the road. It will avoid collisions. It's a remarkable platform. The company Lightos is the builder and they have been hired by the US Navy to build a second version of the Sea Hunter and they will both be used in experimental capability to see how the US Navy could use such vehicles on the surface. Next slide. And we don't know. There's a whole family of unmanned surface vehicles in development. This is just artist conceptions of medium unmanned surface vehicles. Next slide. And this is a maritime system. This is a unmanned, I'm having a terrible day. Unmanned undersea vehicle and they come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Next please. So this was a little out of sequence. This is the surface platform and this is a potential uses for an unmanned automated surface vessel. The picture on the bottom could theoretically be a arsenal ship. It could have hundreds of missiles in the ship controlled by a manned vehicle somewhere else. And so it would significantly expand the capabilities of those surface ships to fire missiles on various targets. Next slide. We briefly mentioned unmanned undersea vehicles. This is a very busy slide and just suffice to say at the bottom we talk about small man portable vehicles. We go into the medium size into large and then to extra large vehicles. All of these have capabilities in various applications. Next slide please. Some of them as we indicate are able to be launched by one individual.  And basically travel with the currents and send back information on temperature, salinity and all the factors that the submariners are particularly interested in in terms of anti-submarine warfare. And then the bigger ones as you see there are launched by ships and the larger they are, they seem to be more capable and the longer range that they have. Next slide. This is one of the more interesting ones. This is the Echo Voyager which was built by Boeing for the ORCA program. And the notion here is, can you have an unmanned submarine that's large enough to do missions of up to six months at a time to carry weapons, to carry whatever you want in a huge cargo area. The vehicle is 81 feet long. It has a 34 foot payload section. It can drop mines from the bottom. It could launch UAVs or missiles from the top. It could even launch steels, navy seals and shallow water against targets ashore. Next slide. And this is the launch of the vehicle out at the Boeing facility. And as you can see, I'm there. Again, I always like to have a blue shirt. So next slide. There you go. Always like to have my blue shirt wherever I go. Boeing has been contracted to build five of these vehicles and they will be turned over to the Navy within the next 18 to 24 months to start developmental work on exactly how they can be used in various applications. Next slide, please. And this is ashore. This is the size of that payload area. So as you can see, it's really huge and gives you the flexibility to do many different things with this unmanned submarine. Next slide, please. Okay, let's switch away from maritime time to ground and we'll go pretty quickly on that. So we leave some time for questions. Next slide. This is the Pac-Bot, which is a explosive... I am having a terrible day. This is a explosive ordnance disposal robot and it's designed to go after improvised explosive devices, IEDs. These have been used extensively in Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations.  Next slide. This is a larger version of a armed robot. This is done by a company called Kinetic and it actually is kind of a mini tank and it has a machine gun, it has a laser dazzler, it has a tear gas dispenser, it has a speaker and a microphone system so you can roll this in and basically tell people clear this area or we're gonna engage, engage you. Always a human in the loop, always someone whose finger is on the trigger and controlling when this thing is utilized. The picture on the right there is a former War College president, Admiral Christensen and the day we brought an armed robot to the War College took a little finagling to get it through the gate but it was an interesting demonstration for our students. Next slide please. This is the multi-utility tactical transport or the MUT. Again, it's the experimental program. This is the idea, can you actually take a larger sized weapon and mount it on a vehicle that will travel with the troops and go where they go and assist them in what they're doing. Next slide. This is kind of a family of unmanned ground vehicles. The small one is the throw bot which is designed to be tossed through a window and give you visibility of what's going on inside that building before you have to go in. Again, an IED type robot on the right and then the larger one there is a utility transport approach which people don't realize other than the soldiers on this. This call is that a modern soldiers has to go into battle with more weight on his back than the knight in shining armor did. And so if you could offload that material on the back of the individual soldier could make them more effective fighters. So the notion here is you would have this mechanized mule in effect that would carry some of the hardware some of the ammunition, some of the batteries and other things. And again, travel with the dismounted trooper as he goes into battle. So lots of different designs, some with wheels, some with tracks, but all designed for the same purpose. And that's to aid in the work that the troops have to do. Next slide, please. This is Boston Dynamics.  In fact, that's a very difficult task. And Boston Dynamics has done more than most in terms of developing a humanoid shaped robot that can actually walk alongside or actually do work as a human being would do on the right hand side or some of their designs for the mechanized mule that we talked about and then several other designs for humanoid robots. Next slide. This is Atlas and this is another design by Boston Dynamics. If you wanna go on YouTube and look at this it's a fascinating piece of video. The robot is brings this box over the human being takes it and knocks it out of his hand. The robot picks it up. The human being knocks it out of his hand again. The robot looks at him like, I'm gonna remember you and when the robots take over you're the guy we're coming after. So it's a humorous video but it shows the capabilities of the system. Next slide please. This is a naval war college version of Battlebots if you will. This is the class that we teach twice a year on unmanned systems and conflict in the 21st century. And you can see there the large scale armed robot. You can see one that I've got my foot on which is a fascinating ball shaped robot that will swim through the water, swim up on the beach. It has the cameras and sensors on either side and those little glass domes. And it is been used by the Marines and by other security operations to basically put it in a storage area and have it roll around and patrol for whatever kind of problems might pop up. And the two smaller ones as you see there there's another round version of the bigger ball and then two of the ground robots that we talked about previously. Next slide. Been a lot of talk of driverless cars. The photo with the yellow car there is really not what we have in mind where you climb in the back seat and let it cruise. However, Tesla, as you can see there in the red car has developed a driverless car system. It's not a fully driverless car. Tesla says you need to stay engaged. You need to keep your hands on the steering wheel or be ready to grab the steering wheel if necessary if the system does not function properly. There have been a number of people who have been killed in Tesla's. They found in many cases it was a driver error. They in one case they were watching a video and the vehicle crashed into a truck. And so it is not ready for prime time although it is coming. The small white when you see there is something that's more involved with like a taxi that would be used on a college campus and whatnot. But driverless cars are potentially in our future. And I think the day will come when you can get in that car and basically say take me to Chicago and it will be able to do that. But it's not here now and people need to be very careful of driverless systems. They're really driver assist systems that use a type of artificial intelligence to drive the automobile under human supervision. Next slide. Very briefly, since we talked so much about military systems I want to touch a couple of touch on a couple of civilian system. This is called Zipline and it is a drone that's been used extensively. Tens of thousands of flights in Africa, many locations. The infrastructure, the road structures is not as good as it could be in bad weather, they become impassable. So this is a system that will launch a drone, fly it for several hundred miles, get over the target, drop the medicine, whatever might be in the box by parachute. It's recovered by the people on the ground and the drone comes back and is reused. So it is a prime example of drones being used for good. Next slide. This is another design. There have been uses of drones to fly medical equipment, defibrillators, et cetera into locations where they're needed. There have been a number of rescues by drones taking flotation devices off the beach to people who are drowning and saving those lives. Next slide. One of the more interesting applications is precision agriculture. And this is a picture of the drone that's going over a field and using sensors to determine which parts of the field potentially are dry and need irrigation, which are infested with the animal, insects and the drone will then report that back to the farmer. And conceivably the drone could then come back and spray materials onto the crops. We have a great need to enhance the ability of crops to feed the hungry and drones have great potential to help us do that. Next slide. Google, Google Air is looking at ways to be able to deliver packages as is Amazon.  It's been done. They've delivered everything from pizza to burritos to medicine, but the issue is really air traffic control. Do we want hundreds or thousands of these aircraft flying around in areas that are gonna have commercial aircraft in them? So a lot of work being done by the FAA to designate certain altitudes for drone use only. And so we think it will come to pass, but still a ways to go on that as well. Next slide. This I love, this is an Amazon prime air and this is a pretty wild concept for a basic blimp warehouse that would fly over various locations.  Why that's better than going to the store and buying it, I'm not quite sure, but a lot of money is being spent on concepts such as this and the ability to deliver material when and where it's needed in new and innovative ways. So next slide. Okay, so we've talked about robots that fly, those that swim and those that crawl. Next slide. Before I mentioned One Nation Under Drones, this is a picture taken on top of the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and those are indeed my pasty weight feet, but One Nation Under Drones is an interesting book and if you wanna know more about how these systems operate, that's a way you can do it. So next slide, please. All right, Gary, I think we're ready to take any questions anyone might have. Thanks very much. All right, thanks Dean for bringing us back to our Zoom session. So we have one question and I would encourage anybody out there that has like additional questions to, please go ahead and type them in the chat box. The one question that we do have and I also have a couple of other questions as well, are what are your views on the challenge at Skeptic State with the use of drones, which is its vulnerability to jamming, hacking and cyber terrorism? Well, that's three big questions right there. I think we have to understand that these systems are vulnerable to hacking, they are vulnerable to jamming. What you have to do is develop the capability in some cases for these systems to be more autonomous so that you give them a task and you're not required to continually provide input as the drone executes that task. The predator, as you may be aware, are hand flown. There is a pilot in command every second they're in the air. If you jam that signal, the aircraft will return to its home base but you don't accomplish the mission that you want to accomplish. So if you have an autonomous system that you say, okay, here is your task, go and do it, send back information and return, then you've avoided that need for the continuous data link.  You can use various systems to harden your control links so that it's not as easy to hack but you're always gonna be subject to potentially someone who's able to crack in there and do you ill. The whole issue of whether or not we should use these, there's a lot of moral and ethical discussions about, do we wanna use these kind of systems? I think the US Navy, the US government, and others, the Air Force have taken a long, hard look at these and have determined that when properly used, they are systems that provide capabilities that we need to execute our mission and to protect our military personnel. And so I think you will continue to see them more and more sophisticated versions of them doing a wide range of applications. All right, thank you very much. One of my questions is, you've absolutely demonstrated that we are here in the unmanned systems world, right? And so if you could talk just a little bit about, how does your course, and this is kind of like, why would someone wanna take your course in order to stay up on kind of like the latest technology of where DOD is going? And can you talk a little bit about the certificate program as well? So what would students be expected to accomplish in order to get the certificate up as well? Absolutely, the course came about because we saw a need for education on this subject. We like to say that when people come into the military, they understand the level of technology it exists. As they get a bit more senior, they understand evolving technology. In the case of unmanned systems, they've kind of dropped in from the top. People are being asked to use and to manage and to make procurement decisions on systems that they really are not that familiar with. So what we hope our course is able to do is to provide that level of knowledge to our students. And it's very interesting. We have students who are drone pilots who know everything there is to know about flying drones, but they don't know much about the ground systems. We have everyone from the border patrol to a large representation of international officers who take the course because of the application these things have in their nations as well. So it's intended to be a baseline course. We will teach during the 10 weeks, we'll teach a maritime session, an aerial session, a ground session, a legal and ethics session. We'll hear from experts in the field, such as PW Singer who wrote the book Ghost Fleet and Others. And so the intent is they spend 10 weeks really involved in these systems. When we get back to the situation where you're in person, then what we do is we bring those vendors into the college and we allow the students actually hands on with these systems. And Admiral Chatfield has had the opportunity to fly some of these things and use some of these things. So it's a good, great opportunity to get beyond the PowerPoint and actually put hands on with these. The course is useful if you wanna go for the Emerging Military Technology Ethics and Emerging Military Technology Certificate Program because it's one of the courses that really applies to what they're doing. So it is usually a popular course in that it's so timely and so relative to what all of these people are gonna be dealing with when they leave the Naval War College. All right, excellent. Yeah, I've seen that it's been very popular and we've covered your graduations when you're handing out your certificates. We have a couple more questions that have come in in the chat and thanks very much for submitting those questions. One question came in and wanted to talk about, so have countries come to terms with drones and have they established the proper policies to control these drones for commerce and its users? And I guess, I mean, that could be, we could flip that over and talk about the policy for like the military uses, but this was kind of focused on the commerce side of the house. Can you talk a little bit about that? Absolutely, it varies by country. Obviously in the United States, the FAA has taken a very slow and steady approach toward allowing these systems to operate in the national airspace. And I applaud them for doing that. Some of the vendors say, hey, you're tying our hands, you're not allowing us to move as quickly as we want to, but we all travel in commercial aircraft and we've heard stories of these drones making near approaches to aircraft coming in for landings and whatnot. It is unfortunately only a question of time before one of these things has sucked into the engine of a commercial aircraft with a potential very, very bad effect. So it behooves us to make sure that we move quickly. There are systems in most of the drones that are imported in the United States or are built in the United States, the small commercial drones that will not allow them to fly into controlled airspace. So the drone will actually detect that it's around a airport and it will not fly into that area. So we need to make sure that those systems are in action at all times to protect that. But absolutely, if you have the ability to fly cargo without a pilot in the aircraft, it's just a much more cost effective approach. And there are a number of people, DHL and others who are looking at this to say, can we in fact eliminate the flight crew and can we do this robotically? The fact of the matter is that most of the flying that's done is done robotically, is done automatically. The pilot is in the front of the airplane in case something goes wrong, but the great potential, the most of the flying is done by the systems at this point. The question is, are we willing to take that next step and say, I'm willing to get in an airplane that does not have a human being in the front of it? I'm not quite there yet, but the day may come. And you're exactly right. I mean, we may not realize how much we are already in a drone when we're up in the sky already. Well, thank you very much, Professor Jackson. We certainly appreciate your time and kind of like going through all of the unmanned systems that are currently out there and being developed. And I am particularly interested in the Echo and the unmanned sub. That looks like so cool. And I'm looking forward to seeing that develop further and us taking possession of it and seeing how that fits in the overall operational submarine world. But thanks so much. And so we are going to take a quick pause for about five minutes and then we are going to move into the family discussion group.


ABOUT BALUCHYANTI BALU Charge-n- calle BALUCHYANTI SADAKA Fareistance car relation between the people of the best


Hey everybody it's Simon at Mixed Up Craft thank you for watching my tutorial today I'm going to be showing you how to make this really sweet it's just really an upgrade from the gift basket that I shared the other day this time it's it's a different size it's slightly shorter but it also has this lid you've got your little hinged handle here and then just with a Velcro dot you open it up you can see there how cute is that like topper and then you open it up and inside there you've got lots of room for some treats and it's just really sweet it's very easy to do the actual box it's just scoring there's no cutting at all so if you see here I've actually stuck them you know like the side pieces on the the outside so there and there popped your hinge handle there and then just some simple mats and layers on the front but I just absolutely adore this flower and the leaves and then that simple sentiment on the top so let me show you how to make these okay so I've just got all the stuff that I need there which I popped to one side and we can get to that later we just go straight into the box making first of all so for the actual base you will need a piece of eight and a quarter by eight and a quarter and you want to score at two inches on all four sides so two, two, two and two okay so you'll have your score lines like this and you should have four squares in each corner okay and then for the lid you will need a piece of seven and a quarter by five and three quarters along the five and three quarter side you want to score at one inch and five and a quarter and then along the seven and a quarter side you want to score at one and a half and five and three quarters okay and now working back with the base just grab a stylus and a metal ruler and you just want to put a score line in each of the squares right across from the you know for this one here you're going to go from the top left to the corner there the bottom corner outer corner like so just straight through so you you've created two like triangles okay you can see there what I've done they're just from that corner where they cross over down to the outer corner so again just rotate and again always put the stylus down first right on the kind of the the crossover there so you know that that's spot on and then you can lay the ruler down next to that and that way you know you're going to get it from point to point you do want to make sure you get your score line so it goes right through that point um you know the corner there of the paper because that way we're getting nice finish when we go to fold it all but can you see now just as it hits the light that score line okay next what you want to do is fold and burnage the score lines on both pieces so you can do the base and the lid and then what you want to do is create a mountain fold on all of those score lines in the corners okay and just kind of move that to each side but you want to just fold it like so so next with your glue you just want to pop it on one of those triangles and then just squeeze them together and then what will happen is we'll pop glue on this side here and then we'll fold it onto this side and stick it down so you end up reinforcing the sides of you know this box as well so just you know you can do that one and then I can move on to this one as well just putting the glue again on one of those triangles if you put it on both it's just going to be a bit messy you don't need to so again I can just hold those now at the same time and get those stuck down okay and then you want to choose what side you want to stick them both onto so I'm going to have those two for example on this side here so you know it doesn't matter because it's an equal side so any one will do you're just going to pop glue on that and then bring it over you want to make sure everything lines up nicely just squeeze that down a little bit there this is all flush there with the top again whilst I'm holding that one I can just pop a bit of glue on this one here and again just stick that one down making sure it all lines up nicely okay so those two are there so then these two need to be on the opposite side so they're going to go in there so you see those two and then those two so just stick them exactly the same way okay so that's that one all done okay and then with the lid really simple cutting you've got your small half inch kind of tab here you just want to cut up both of the score lines and just remove the corners and then flip it around and do the same on the front so you just cutting down both of those score lines okay and what will happen is this back piece is going to be attached to the back of the box this will become the front and these are just the side flaps so just really give it some stability and keep it shape okay so next we need to create our window or our aperture so it's up to you if you want to do this next step you don't have to but I've just got some stitched squares here and I'm using these two here I'll give you the measurements for those so the largest one is what we're going to use to create our frame so it's just a little bit of detail that's three and a half squared and this one here is three inches squared and that's the one you want first is that smaller one and you're going to sit it in the center of your lid and you're just going to run that through your die machine so I'm just going to use a little bit of washi tape stick your washi tape on the inside part just that way if it does you know stick too much and it rips the card at least it's going to rip the piece that you don't need so I'm just going to sit that about there pop that there and I'm just going to run that through my machine if you pop it you know lengthways then you'll fit it through a standard die cutting machine that one's cut out perfectly and next you want to keep this one so that's cut away and I can keep that now as a nice bit of scrap and then you're going to with a piece of white cardstock so I've got some here lay the card down and lay the smaller one inside with that larger one you just want to create a nice even frame you don't have to have them the same pattern as me yours could just be you know nice straight stitch they could be you know even a more decorative than mine it doesn't matter this is just going to create a frame and again you don't have to do this so I'm just sticking that across there just to hold it all in place now you'll see this frame will drop out from between the two and what will happen is that piece will stick around there purely for decorative reasons that's all okay so like I said you don't have to do it but I do think it finishes off the box quite nicely okay next I've cut a piece of acetate here and I've already put some red double-sided tape around it and this is a piece of three and three-quarters squared and I'm just going to take my backing off this over and you're just going to stick it so that it covers that section and just go over with a bone folder just to make sure you get all the air bubbles out and that's nice and secure like so and then with this piece here again I'm just going to grab my glue and I'm just going to run just a little line of glue just all the way around there and lay that one down now if you want to decorate it now as well you can if you'd find it easier you may be keeping it plain you know you might want people to be able to see inside it without anything kind of you know getting in the way of the view so it's entirely up to you what you do okay so now that is all ready next we want to attach it to this piece so I have these where we've created this side detail here those are the sides of the box so this is going to stick to the back here and then this will come over and you'll see it will all sit in side each other and once the handles are on that'll bring up your sides a little bit but we need to just cut away a little bit here as well I forgot so here you want to come down from this bottom edge by about half an inch and then cut up on the diagonal like that so again here come in about half an inch cut up like so and now that should feel better when it goes in so I'm going to pop some glue along the back of this tab here and I'm just going to sit that over there for the minute and just kind of let it kind of grab and then once you know it's it's kind of in position then you can lift it up and apply a bit more pressure but fold down the sides you know in the front that way you know everything is in place and the back sticking to where it should so now I can just lift that up let that drop down I can just go in there now with my finger and just push down but that's nice and secure there now while that's just you know drying more I've got these pieces here and this is purely ductive again for the front here so my white mat is one and three quarters by four and then that slightly I guess like a stone color is one and a half by three and three quarters so I've already stuck my layer on there so I'm just going to pop some glue on the back and again this will just strengthen it because that is just a single piece of cardstock but once you add this onto the front it will really strengthen the whole piece okay I'm just going to leave that there for a minute we'll stick that down in a sec I've also then got my handle here so this is a piece of mine's 12 because I cut all this from a piece of 12 by 12 but you 11 will be fine or 11 and three quarters so if you're using your A4 and then I've just cut so that is one inch wide and then this here is about quarter just over it's just under like half in between it's again purely decorative but I just thought it broke up that kind of you know solid color in the handle you might want to stamp yours you might use white card and do a nice stamped pattern on it or you might put some pattern paper you might be doing the whole box in pattern paper but I just you know I do pattern paper all the time I thought I'm going to just focus on planes today do something a little bit different and then you just want to sit it because my white is three quarters of an A4 length it doesn't quite go to the ends but because I'm going to be attaching the brads you won't notice you won't see it so it doesn't matter but I also went ahead and curled both of those before that way when the glue dries it will dry in that shape so it will help strengthen the handle and because we're attaching brads you know you could put something with a little bit of weight into this as well it would hold quite well again I'm doing it in steps so that everything has time to dry so now while that's drying I'll go back to the box pop in the sides and then I've got this piece here and this is a piece the mat the white piece is four by three quarters and then that stone color is three and three quarters by half an inch again I've already stuck one on there so I'm just going to pop my glue on the back I also went and used my corner punch here and I just rounded off the corners there and I will do that on this piece in a second as well so that's going to go in there but again you don't have to it still looks nice without but that now can go there I just flip this over now that all matches up nicely to go back into that one a bit there we go then we want to do the whole punches so I've just got my punch here and I'm just coming down really as far as I can it's about half an inch like so again on this side here there we go and then I'm just going to come up much about half an inch and there again and then I'm just going to search through my brads and I think I'm going to go for like a coral color something that's going to match nicely with that flower that I'm using and the coral goes really nice with this stone color so we go for those so I can just pop my brad through there and then pop that through there if you want to have it inside you can but I like it on the outside I think it looks quite nice and then just open your split pin inside and again and then you can pop all that in or pop a velcro dot on there in a minute and I'm just going to bring this up a little bit more I've got a few little wrinkles there in my cardstock the white but I'm not too worried you can't really see it but now look how lovely that's all coming together so now we just need to add a velcro dot I've just got one of my little 10 mil ones here and I'm just going to pop that in the center and then close that up if you want to use magnets you can you may want to you know put a hole punch through here and here and tie it with some ribbon I've gone a little bit off there there we go that's better open it up and just squeeze those both down and now we can decorate the top of this so I have got one of these flowers which I've already done and I've die cut these here and actually this one has come out of one of the Simply Made Craft sets and it's this one here it's the hexagon clutch bag and I've used these two to create the flower and then these are the leaves here and I just cut that using silver cardstock and then I've just got some strips here of foam because you can use hot glue on the acetate you have to be very careful obviously because it may warp it slightly but it will end up you could just peel it off once it goes cold whereas if you stick foam pads to acetate they're actually really hard to get off they leave you know a sticky mark so they're perfect for this so but again you might not want to be sticking anything onto here anyway so but I do like the thought of it right in the center there and then with these pieces what I done is I actually glued them onto the bottom of the flower so maybe you might want to do that and I didn't use this glue either I used this glue here you may find this easier to do before you stick the flower down so but that's again if you want to do it this way so just unblock swap just a little bit of glue on the bottoms there and then literally just go underneath and then just pinch it it grabs very very quick like so but by doing it actually stuck to the flower can you see all that kind of dimension that you get it looks really good so I'm just going to go and stick these down so that's that done and then I've got my sentiments so I've taken these because I was going to use these ones and I think they still look nice so I thought I'd still show you because you could just have a little bit of kind of you know baker's twine and then just kind of have that poking out there these ones from this set here which is for the lover stamps and it's tagtastic you can see there's all different ones there even like the mischew I think they look really nice but then I stamped these ones which I love and this is the woodware one liners and again I'll bring in that one there because you can just see I just really like that very clean finish so that's what I'm going to do so I've done two so I wasn't sure which ones that I wanted to use but this one's here a little something just for you I think that's really nice but then I do like the sending lots of love because this one will go off the frame there whereas that one's just there so I think I'm going to go for the sending lots of love again I'm just going to use one of these strips here I can't remember where I got these strips from but they're really handy but I think they came from a kit so I doubt I'll be able to just buy them like this but it's just so easy and then I'm just going to attach this to the acetate again not everybody's going to want to do this but I do like it there we go okay and there you have it just bring that up just so you can see it's so nice and once you've got stuff in there you can see that what you can definitely you know put some weight to this put a little bit tissue paper inside you could put some treats in there and you've just made me think of something because I genuinely didn't think about this but let's just see if it will hold four tonics tea cakes so I've got a feeling it might but this was I really didn't plan for this to be the case but look at that lots of you are going to laugh now yep they fit perfectly like it's it's snug but they go in but look at that isn't that a nice treat they go so I didn't even realize until I've just thought then anyway so I hope you've enjoyed them they will fit many things look really nice with some jewelry in actually as well but yeah hope you've enjoyed them please give me a thumbs up if you have and consider subscribing so you get to see more thanks for watching bye


Hello everyone and welcome to We Meet at Digital Days. My name is Marie-Thérèse Kohl and I will moderate this presentation. We are very pleased that you took the time to participate in our virtual conference. The topic of this presentation is high-frequency three-phase PFC solutions for high-power charging stations from our partner ST Microelectronics. Our speaker is Francesco Genaro. He will hold the presentation and will answer your questions. But before we start, I would like to point out one thing. You will be muted during the presentation. This means that you cannot ask questions via microphone during the presentations. Nevertheless, you have the opportunity to ask questions during the presentation at any time via the chat function. You will find the chat function in the control panel. This presentation will be about 30 minutes long. The chat questions will be answered in a Q&A session following the webinar. There are 5 to 10 minutes in addition scheduled for this. If we are unable to answer all your questions within this time, we will answer them via email afterwards. If you still have any other questions left, just mail us at exhibition at we-online.com. We will try to answer all questions promptly. At the end of the webinar, you will be asked to participate in a feedback survey. You would be pleased if you take the time to fill out a survey and help us to improve our event. You will also receive the link to the presentation in the next few days. The recording will be available at our website shortly. But now I will hand over to our speaker Francesco, and I wish you an exciting presentation. Good afternoon. My name is Francesco Genaro, I am an application manager for Power Condition Development and a working system research and application group in SD Micropronics. Today we will discuss about high-frequency 3-phase BFC solution for high-power charge stations. With a very short agenda, we will give a look at the charge station as a general power factor correction, a short view of semiconductor technologies which are interested in this application, and a focus on a specific topology, which is the bi-directional TFC, named three-level T-type conductor. Then we will go to conclusions. Charge stations are the very companion of characterization, and they are really impacting on the grid infrastructure and management. In this presentation, I will go to a building block of a charge station, in particular a DC charge station, looking at the active front end, which is the interface of the charge station with the grid itself. In this case, due to the interface functionality, power quality performance are very important as well as efficiency and size of the charge station itself. General power converted topology for high power are available and will be considered in terms of efficiency and performance. With a specific look at the introduction of the new technologies and conductive technology which is based on silicon carbide, charge stations are basically energy-driven applications and we can see which is the trend towards 2030, and we are going up to 180 billion kilowatt-hours with a number of chargers which is increasing everywhere in the world, from US, Europe, and China as well. And the investment plan, as we can see from the source of this TASI, which is McKinsey, up to $50 billion by 2030. The charging station as a DC fast charger has basically two blocks. The first one is interface with the grid, which is the PFC or the power factor corrector circuit, and then there is a second stage, which is the isolated DC-DC converter, which is providing the regulated current to charge the battery of the car, for example. Giving a look at the specific or the three-phase PFC, of course, we have availability of power technologies for the switches, and we need also some signal conditioning and the control section, and basically for this application, just microcontrollers, standard microcontrollers are available and are able to drive the application. Shortly on power factor correction, as I said, the front-end converter is the power electronic stage which is in charge of controlling the input current, making the power converter behaving as a resistor, so basically having the input current in phase with the voltage and drawing a very sinusoidal current. This is important because this is impacting the quality of the grid and also the losses that we can feature on the grid. So two main factors, two main figures or merits, are important in terms of power factor correction and are the power factor itself, which is a number, but also the total harmonic distortion, which is a measure of the number of harmonics that are inside the current that we are drawing from the grid. In Europe, for example, there is a specific standard which is driving and regulating this harmonic distortion and all the behavior of the power factor correction. Giving a look at the history, this is the very first three-phase PFC, very simple, which is consist of input inductors plus a three-phase diode bridge and only one active switch, which is regulating the input current. Of course, it was not performing the best for this application, but it was just the first starting point for the new application. Total harmonic distortion was not the best or still quite high, but this was the thing, as I said, this was just the beginning of the history. And this was a second step still for the three-phase, where after several studies, we came up with a very simple topology, as we can see here, and it's called as a Vienna rectifier, where basically the three-phase converter has been optimized with bi-directional switches, and in addition, with a three-level modulation, which is able to stress the device with half of the output voltage. And this is more and more important as the output voltage is increasing. So in particular, for charging stations where a typical DC bus voltage is in the order of 800 volts, more or less, it is important to have reduced voltage across the switches, because this will save a lot of switching losses. There is also another approach to the three-phase solution, which is a modular approach starting from single phase. This solution is allowed to have three modules, three single phase modules, with a single output, which could be operated even in parallel, in order to improve the enlarge the available power. These topologies and these architecture are really suitable, where there is a possibility to supply the chargers station, even with a single phase or with a three-phase, directly three-phase voltage. So I would say that the three-phase module approach with a single-phase module is more suitable for onboard charging. But it's going also to introduce in order to reduce the industrial cost, also for the three-phase system for chargers station itself. Semiconductor technologies, which are very important in this field, because they are enabling the development of new structures increasing also the performance of the solution. So just to give a look at what is available in the market from semiconductor supplier and dividing the overall scenario in terms of frequency and output power, we can see that chargers stations are more or less positioned in a power range above 10 kW. So let's say starting from 20 to 22 kW up to some hundreds of kW. Of course, the 100 kW application is more and more modular, with some basic building blocks in the order of 30 or 50 kW. In the same area, in terms of power semiconductor, we can also position the silicon carbide, both for diodes and MOSFETs, since it's in these technologies providing a very high frequency and high power superior performance compared to other semiconductor technologies like silicon, in this case. There is also a smaller part for GAN, but of course this is limited with the lower power application and higher-reaching application itself. So for the chargers station, I would say that semiconductor of choice is the silicon carbide, and this is a short story of silicon carbide from 20 years ago, till now with the continuous shrinking of the size of the die and the superior performance, which are more and more improving in the last year. So also in terms of adoption in the market, there was in the last three or four years an increase of more or less 30 times from 2017 to today. The selection of this semiconductor technology is not only for a lower voltage class, which means 660 volts, but it's also available for 1200 volts devices, and this is where silicon carbide is providing the best performance and the best benefits for the overall application. Also, because silicon iGBTs is the counterpart in terms of the semiconductor technology, in terms of silicon, and of course there is no real substitution of silicon carbide of the silicon iGBTs, but it depends on what is the final aim of the application. It would like to have high power and high efficiency with no cost relationship, so then silicon carbide most that can be considered for sure. On the other side, if we need a balance between cost and performance, silicon iGBTs are the device of choice. I will show later which could be the benefit of using one or the other technology. Six benefits and advantages which are really summarizing in these slides. So higher performance and voltage operation, so extremely low power losses, high efficiency at low current, and there is also the intrinsic sick body diode, which is able to provide the forefront operation. We can increase operating frequency with the lowest reach losses and reaching performance of the diode as well. And there is one additional factor which is really important, which is the operating temperature that we can extend due to the wide-band gap material characteristics up to 200 degrees Celsius in terms of junction temperature. Of course, also the package has to sustain this high temperature, so there is not only semiconductor, but there is also package. So there is an overall efficiency regain in a typical application with higher, with lower, reaching losses, more or less one tenth, with one fifth of chip size, so also the size can be reduced and total losses reduced by 50% after switching frequency, which can be 10 times higher. So of course, there is no single answer to the question of the selection, but of course, as usual, is a trade-off between performance, cost, size, and overall design. As I said, there is a very strong link between technology of the semiconductor and the package. So in order to get the best benefit from this superior technology, we need also to have a suitable package in order to manage, basically, thermally, the final device. And also for silicon carbide, has been developed some specific package, which is a single dual-dye packages, like the HU3PAC and the STPAC, which are for very high current application, thanks to the superior thermal performance. When the discrete approach is not enough in terms of power, then the module, the low-cost and very simple module that we call ASPEC, or ASPEC one or two, or ASPEC three, can be used in order to have a multi-dye power module. Just to provide you a very, very simple comparison between silicon carbide and silicon. So basically, silicon carbide MOSFET and silicon GBT is inside the module. We can see that from a simple exercise, there will be a reduction of 10 times compared to silicon more, silicon IGBTs, thanks to the reduced size of the dial. And in terms of performance, if we give a look at the efficiency graph here for silicon carbide MOSFET, we can achieve more than 3% of efficiency gain compared to silicon IGBTs. It is important also to have a very good selection in terms of topologies in order to reduce the size of the overall converter. So the typical building block for the converter, like the alpha bridge, the full bridge, or the six-pack full bridge are available in the market, as well as three-level T-type leg, which is very common in this kind of application. Which is the real importance of the package technology. It's important basically for three steps. The first one is from an electrical point of view, because we can reduce the internal connection layout. So we can reduce the parasitics inductance of the connection. We can improve the overall layout of the board. So this will lead for sure in the reduction of the noise around the circuit and in improving of the switching losses, so the efficiency of the converter. There is also a thermal aspect. Since the module is much easier to dissipate the heat from the circuit and also to manage the overall thermal aspects of the application. It's quite easier since it's concentrated is one module. And going back to electrical aspects, the noise and the disturbance around the circuit, which are included inside the optimized layout of the module, will be reduced. So the overall EMI of the circuit will be improved using this package. Let's go to simple PFC topologies. So the three-level topologies are being summarized in two. So in the generative fire type one and type two, type two has a basic comparison between the two topologies. The main difference is that in type one, we can use only 650 volts devices. So we do not need any very high voltage device, even if the output voltage is up to 800 volts or 9900 volts. Since it is a three-level topology and the voltage across the device will not see higher than half of the output DC voltage. But there is a disadvantage which is related with the current path that we'll see always two switches in series, one diode and one arctic switch, with a lower, slightly lower efficiency, which is not the case of the type two generative fire, but there is the necessity to use 1200 volts devices. Or in this case, for example, D2 plus and minus 12 volts, and the volt diodes. Here we have a comparison between the performance of type one and type two converter and the spanning the frequency between 20 kilohertz and 80 kilohertz. We can see which is the difference between the three main semiconductor technologies. The first one is the silicon AGPTs in red, in green, the superjunction monster. So still based on silicon technology. And the blue one is based on silicon carbide MOSFETs. For the two topology, we don't see a very big difference when the switching frequency is quite low for a given device. But as soon as we increase the switching frequency, we approach 100 kilohertz, which can be something feasible for this kind of application. We can see a small difference in terms of efficiency in the order of 0.2, 0.3%, which is nothing for one kilowatt application. But if you consider 50 kilowatt application, this means a lot of energy that can be dissipated. For sick and able technology, what does it mean? It means that thanks to the introduction of silicon carbide technology, some topologies that are not able to be used with the superjunction MOSFETs or with general silicon-based power transistor are, again, valid also for very high power and high switching frequency. This is the case of the generative fire type II with input diodes using silicon carbide diodes and also for the bi-direction of the generative fire, which is an evolution of the type II generative fire, just replacing the input diode bridge with active devices. In this case, the switches from T1 to T6 has to be rated at 1200 volts. Why we are talking about bi-directional converters? This is very important. This is a new trend since there is a smart grid and there is a vehicle-to-grid capability of the converters more and more requested. So we need to reverse the energy from the battery to the grid in addition to charge the battery from the grid. So the bi-directional function is more and more requested and I would say is the selection choice for any new development for the range between 20 kilowatts and up to 350 kilowatts, for example. There is also the enabling of the standard fridge-boost converter, which is based on V6 technology. Thanks to silicon carbide MOSFETs, reduce switching losses and reduce size. So this is what's new. Thanks to the silicon carbide technology, the fridge-boost converter. So let's give a look at an example, an exercise that we did with the demo solution, a demo board. So we use a specification on the table, so for under volts VSE, in the input 800 volts DC on the output, 13 kilowatts up to RMS, up to 15 kilowatts peak power, the switching peak pressure of 70 kilowatts, and for the PFC design, we use a ripple current of 2.5 amps on the input with 10 volts peak to peak on the output as a ripple voltage. The question for the design are shown there and of course we can see that in order to select the design, the input inductor, we have to know the switching frequency as well as the ripple current that we can accept and the modulation index of the converter, which is defined as the ratio between the input voltage and half of the DC output voltage. The RMS current is defined as the DC power divided by three times the input voltage RMS, and this would be the RMS current of the select inductor with the peak value of 25 amps, more or less. This bidirectional structure demo board is able also to be operated also as a bridges three-phase or single boost three-phase solution when we disconnect the three-level T-type cell. So we can evaluate the board and the system not only as a three-level solution but also as a two-level. A very short summary of performance compared to the two-level and three-level converter in terms of semiconductor technology is shown here where silicon carbide is always performing better than IGBTs except a very, very small frequency span at a very low frequency, but once we increase the switching frequency above 50 kilohertz the difference between the two converter in terms of efficiency can reach up to 3-4%. So why selecting one solution against the other? For which are the pros and cons of the three-level versus the two-level? For the three-level we have losses distributed over more components so we can spread better the heat generated by the switches. We can have higher efficiency at higher switching frequency thanks to the three-level approach and also thanks to the reduced voltage we can reduce the volume of the input and output. Which are the cons of this solution? We need more components. We have higher complexity also in terms of control. We could need an output voltage balancing for the split capacitor output and also an expected higher cost because of more components. So in the table you can see how many PWM complementary we need for the two-level and two-level converter. It's more complex. We need more gate driver. We also more isolated the CDC converter to supply the gate driver. This is the basic schematic of the solution. It's based on a standard microcontroller and thus a microcontroller STM32G4 and is implemented in the bi-direction functionality thanks to the grid relay which are able to connect and disconnect from the grid. The system is based on a very simple control both for the AC, DC and DC to AC conversion based on DQ axis transformation. So we can decouple exactly the active and reactive power and then we can have a very accurate regulation of active and reactive power as well as the power factor of the system. So this is a summary of the specs of the board and the goal is to have a power factor higher than 0.90% starting from 20% of the load and the total harmonic distortion below the 5% which is basically according to the standard and an efficiency higher than 97% starting from 20% of the output or the output load. Key products are starting from the microcontroller, serial and carbide MOSFETs and of course there is one key part, key component which is not a semiconductor but is a magnetic so the input inductor which is not trivial to manage is not trivial to design and is not trivial to manufacture with the reasonable cost. To give you an idea of the complexity of the system the MCU is using high resolution timer to manage the high frequency operation and is also equipped with the math accelerator like the codec or the trigonometric function which is requested by the DQ axis transformation. Here is a picture of the system. We are the three input boost inductor given by VOOT. This is a system that has been developed in partnership with VOOT Electronics and we have developed and optimized this kind of components. Thanks to this we were able to reach very high efficiency so as I said above 97% after the 2kW and then up to 98% and in that range for the full range. In terms of power factor we are always in the range of 99%. So going back to the PFC inductor which are the main requirements of this part which is not semiconductor but is impacting the performance of the system not only in terms of efficiency but also in terms of total harmonic distortion and power factor controllability. We need in addition to have low thermal resistance because of thermal management we need low parasitic capacitance in order to have reduced losses on the components. It is able to work in offline application with very high voltage and has to be low leakage, low radiated magnetic field with a compact design and easy to be mounted on the board. These are the main specs of the inductor that we use and has been optimized and this is the final stage of a study that we did starting from a standard right core so the E65 and the EE80 which are able to manage the 27, 28 pic current grid and we finalize with the toroidal one and in order to give an explanation to this selection we of course gave a look also at the cost of these final components and if we took one the price and the cost of the E65 core but that was importantly able to handle only 17 amps we finished with 0.72% of the cost with the toroidal one against a 3.85 with the EE80 so we can understand which is the component of selection for low cost industrial solution. So let's go to the conclusion Chargers Station are an emerging application and DC Chargers are gaining a market up to 50 kW in terms of application. Of course this is a basic building block of the final application and we can stack several modules and interact them to have a very high power Chargers Station. The bidirectional functionality is more and more requested in order to allow this converter in general any battery charger with a smart grid equipped with the V2G functionality. The front-end converter represents the connection to the grid so it's a very very important part of the system so even if it's simple it has to manage the most difficult part of the game. Silicone carbide MOSFETs is as introduction is a very important factor in this application allowing a simple solution simple architecture to be used with a very high frequency solution and high performance in terms of efficiency and the switching frequency which is very very important in order to have a superior performance also in terms of power quality. Thank you for your time and I'm ready for your question. Thanks a lot Francesco for your interesting presentation. Now we would like to turn our attention to your questions and we will wait a second until some questions will come in and I already see one first question Francesco can the Vienna converters be realized for low voltage applications or they are confined to only high voltage applications? In general Vienna ratifier can be used even for low voltage applications it depends on the input voltage as well as the output voltage. The main benefit is when you have the high voltage on the output so you can split the output voltage you can divide it at least by two the output voltage so this will allow to have reduced switching losses. There is also let's say a decision to take consideration of the power that we have to manage so basically the specs has to be considered not only the voltage on the output but also the input voltage and the output power itself. Thanks maybe one next question is the board suitable only for silicon carbide MOSFETs? As I've shown there is also a possibility to use other semiconductor technology so super jump with MOSFET as well as IGBTs and for these different technologies some fine tuning for the switching frequency as being done for example for IGBTs in order to have the best performance the switching frequency should be reduced a little bit maybe around 30 kilohertz. Perfect thanks and maybe one last question is the board automotive grade qualified? The system is just a demo board and has been built using industrial grade components but in terms of concept we have all the components available to have the same solution based on automotive grade components. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for answering the questions I would say if there are any questions left we will answer them via email afterwards so thank you very much for your attention and I hope you enjoyed our presentation the next and last presentation for you today is case study how ESD could generate electromechanic issues and it will start at 5 p.m. See you there and enjoy our digital days. Goodbye. Thank you to all. Have a nice afternoon. Bye.