Supported by four whipping rotors, a sleek Northrop Grumman MQ-8B Fire Scout drone made a loop over the crowd at the Fourth Biennial Unmanned Systems demonstration on Monday as a voice over a loudspeaker proclaimed, “ladies and gentlemen, this is not your father’s helicopter.”

The obvious lack of a cockpit had already made that clear.

Aside from takeoff, when an operator remotely maneuvered the Fire Scout off the ground, the rest of the flight, including a brief period of hovering and spinning at a level of 50 feet, and the landing were automated. The demonstration was just one in a series of robotic capability over Patuxent River Naval Station’s Webster Field in Maryland.

The event, sponsored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) in conjunction with the Program Executive Office for Strike Weapons and Unmanned Aviation, featured demonstrations of 10 unmanned ground systems and 17 unmanned air systems, with aircraft wingspans ranging from a few feet to the equal of a Boeing 737 jet.

Demonstrators included the biggest names in autonomous military systems as well as upstarts looking to break into the market. The live displays were prelude to an AUVSI conference in Washington scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday.

One of the newcomers at Webster Field was Prioria, a company that began working on its mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) system about four years ago. To show off the diminutive Maveric, spokesman Dryan da Frota pressed the machine’s curved, flexible wings into the hands of journalists with a challenge to try snapping them.

“You can’t hurt it,” he said, bending and twisting the little plane. In fact, the Maveric’s wings can be wrapped around it so it can be stored in a tube with its tablet-PC control unit. “You want a plane that’s ready to go,” da Frota said.

The UAV’s real revolutionary feature isn’t its portability, da Frota said — it’s the obstacle-avoidance system. An onboard computer compares data from images taken with a color camera. When it identifies a group of pixels it identifies as a structure, such as a tree or building, it changes the plane’s course to avoid a collision. The system could work on other UAVs, da Frota said.

The spokesman said Prioria’s development has been financed solely with private money and the company is looking for a corporate partner or buyer for the Maveric, which can fly up to 25,000 feet, reach 60 miles per hour and stay in the air for 45 minutes.

At the other end of the spectrum, Proxy Aviation Systems Director of Business Management Jim Carter said the company is looking for a buyer for the SkyWatch and SkyRaider UAVs, among the largest models on display.

The SkyRaider also featured something the other UAVs lacked: a cockpit and controls. Carter said that because UAVs are confined to restricted air space over America, the SkyRaider has an advantage: A pilot actually flew it to Webster Field, passing over Washington airspace. In a war zone, the piloted aircraft could act as its own transport, instead of requiring cargo planes or trucks, Carter said.

The SkyRaider has another unusual aspect when running in autonomous mode, Carter said. The aircraft is programmed to fly in packs of four and adjust to ideal surveillance patterns. Proxy has only built one SkyWatcher and one SkyRaider but the company has run tests with two simulated aircraft and says its SkyForce system could manage the control of as many as 12 UAVs.

Proxy, founded in 2003, also used private money for development costs. Carter said new UAV companies face a daunting challenge in waiting for buyers. Established competitors can afford to wait for contracts, he said. “It’s tough, because the process is so long,” he said.

Other companies weren’t looking to break into the UAV game with new aircraft but with components. Steven Gardner, chief technical officer at Enerdyne, said his Enerlinks II unit can convert the analogue transmission signals of older midsize UAVs to the digital needs of newer systems, with display software that allows for rewinding and frame-by-frame viewing.

“We can make it so the receiver performs better than an analogue system, with three to four times the range,” Gardner said.

The larger UAV manufacturers highlighted range and surveillance capabilities, with models such as AAI Corp.’s Shadow and Insitu Scan Eagle tracking a “terrorist” van driven through the airfield by soldiers.

Products in development include a collapsible version of the mid-sized Boeing Scan Eagle UAV, with wings that fold underneath for storage, leaving the aircraft looking like a torpedo. Spokesmen said the new version can be dropped, bomb-like, from the underside of planes or deployed from submarines.

Looming over the Northrop Grumman display area was the largest UAV on display, a tailless X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System, a gray, diamond-shaped craft that is difficult to spot in flight and is capable of armed combat, high subsonic speeds and a 4,500-pound internal payload. It bears a passing resemblance to a smaller version of the Lockheed-Martin F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter.

Northrop Grumman said the Navy recently agreed to an X-47B development program. More details should be available at the AUVSI conference in Washington.

One of the biggest names thrown around at the live demonstration wasn’t a UAV manufacturer at all. It was Microsoft’s Xbox.

Many of the established companies said they are taking advantage of soldiers’ ever-increasing exposure to video games and making their control systems resemble an Xbox as much as a cockpit.

Raytheon spokesman Michael Keaton said that was one of the ideas taken into account when his company developed its Universal Control System, for which it is now seeking a buyer. To illustrate the point, one of the devices hooked up to the UCS during a Cobra UAV demonstration flight was an actual Xbox controller.

“We feel we have to take advantage of the fact that all the kids are growing up with video games,” he said.

The UCS, which can control multiple UAVs and guided cruise missiles using a split-screen system, can operate on multiple monitors and work with more traditional flight simulation controls, said Keaton, a former fighter and Predator drone pilot.

Keaton said the system can analyze engine problems in-flight and report them to the operator and that it can work with any UAV running industry-standard software and can be customized for those that don’t. And, he said, it can incorporate national borders into its display, making it ideal for homeland surveillance.

Another Xbox-like controller was on display at Israeli Aircraft Industries, this one with a 10-inch screen mounted on it. The controller and a transmitting backpack are all a soldier needs in the field to control the I-VIEW MK-5 UAV, marketing manager Joel Shapira said.

“Essentially, our philosophy is you don’t pilot the aircraft. . . the aircraft pilots itself and you control the [surveillance equipment],” Shapira said.

He said the I-VIEW, which has a parachute-like system for precise landings, has buyers in unspecified foreign governments, but the U.S. government is not a customer.

Video game aspects were also present on the automated ground system side. Along with manufacturers who displayed actuators that can clip onto Humvees and trucks for remote control, iRobot and John Deere showed off the R-Gator, a version of the rugged Deere Gator transport vehicle with a built-in autodrive system.

At the flip of a button, the R-Gator goes from auto to manual, project manager Chris Rhodes said. The ordinary Gator can be found hauling cargo for everything from professional football teams to Homeland Security component agencies. Rhodes said 4,000 are currently deployed by the armed services.

In auto mode, the R-Gator can be used for border patrol, or several units can be programmed to travel together in a convoy. Deere and iRobot had started with a more complicated remote controlling system, but Rhodes said soldiers wanted something closer to a video game. “If you can use an Xbox, you can use this,” Rhodes said.

Rob Margetta can be reached at rmargetta@cq.com.