Tag Archives: UAV

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DARPA to fund really tiny UAVs

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navLike something out of an early Neal Stephenson novel: DARPA have agreed to fund a coin-sized one-bladed nanocopter[1], from the Defense Sciences Office design brief:

The Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program will develop and demonstrate an extremely small (less than 7.5 cm), ultra-lightweight (less than 10 grams) air vehicle system with the potential to perform indoor and outdoor military missions.

The program will explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations.

The nanocopter, called the Katana and designed by Lockheed Martin, is in addition to DARPA’s other micro-ornithopter robot concept (pictured here). Read here for more in depth background to the Katana’s progenitor, the Samurai.

[1] Although there doesn’t seem to be anything especially “nano” about it apart from being, y’know, really small.

[image and article from The Register]

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Homebrew UAV: arduino

curvy_gridFlash forward 20 years. Everyone has access to an open-source personal rapid prototyper (notwithstanding a fabber equivalent of Bill Gates…) and can rustle up one of these homebrew UAVs: at the drop of a futuristic ambient computer thing:

Combined with a RC plane, this makes it easy to build a complete UAV for less than $500, which is really kind of amazing. As exciting as that it is, it’s also sobering to know that a technology that was just a few years ago the sole domain of the military is now within the reach of amateurs…

As Charles Stross points out, ready-to print Saturday night specials could be only a decade away, and along with the UAVs and the fabbers it makes the next few years an interesting time to be alive.

[via Warren Ellis][image from tanakawho on flickr]

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STARA airdrop device

Reading about this courier device puts me in mind of an event in Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling:

To avoid the bad guys, high-flying planes can release Stara’s Mosquito. Its customizable cylinder, which can handle up to 150 pounds, contains a GPS unit and servomotor for steering the parachute to a drop site up to 2 miles away.

Actuators cut loose the payload at a preset altitude (from 50 to 1,500 feet). This way, anyone tracking the chute will end up as much as a half mile from the goods, which may be camouflaged as, say, a fist-sized rock.

The company is promoting the $10,000 Mosquito for special forces deliveries — money, passports, blood packets.

In Heavy Weather a character orders certain products which are couriered across the countryside by a monopedal robot – but the principle of ordering stuff via your satphone and having it delivered to any GPS coordinates in the world strikes me as very cool.

[on Wired][image from STARA Technologies inc]

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Raytheon in underwater UAV shocker

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Kudos and congrats to the US military industrial complex for continuing to output such consistently high quality James-Bondworthy widgets and gizmos. The latest is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle from arms megacorp Raytheon that can be launched from a submarine without having to surface:

The new U-UAV is dubbed SOTHOC, for Submarine Over the Horizon Organic Capabilities. The launch system works by deploying a sealed can through the sub’s waste disposal lock. The can then sinks away safely to get clear of the boat. On reaching a preset depth it dumps weight to become positively buoyant and ascends to the surface. Once stable at the surface, it aligns itself into wind and launches a one-shot, disposable UAV.

Gawd bless America for supplying the rest of the worlds military hardware geeks with a consistent supply of goodness with no only minimal risk to our own person (unless you live in one of the Axis of Evil countries).

Peace out.

[from the Register][image from Ardyiii on flickr]

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Swarms, Not Flocks

Here’s an interesting round-up of info about the work being done on developing UAVs that fly in swarms. The swarm is a great model of operations for flying robots, as it allows for complex behaviours without centralised control of the individuals, by using a form of communication referred to as ‘stigmergy’. Not convinced? Think of a flock of birds at dusk, and the way they can all move with a uniform fluidity, never crashing into one another, and seemingly thinking as one. We’ll probably see military apps first, but this technique could be applied to planetary exploration too.