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I submit the Aerosonde as the first robot to cross the Atlantic Ocean. Admittedly a slightly easier task when flying.

Ah, no: http://www.aerosonde.com/ http://www.thalesgroup.com/

Sorry dude, but you're wrong. Driving a wheeled vehicle on the ground with irregular obstacles is a LOT harder than flying a traditional UAV by autopilot. When you're flying, you can avoid any obstacle with "go a bit higher" and your path planning simplifies down to "stay straight and level, and fly towards the next waypoint".

These guys flew an autonomous UAV across the Atlantic back in '98. It's even been done by a bunch of dedicated amateurs. And then there's the guy in New Zealand who's built his own cruise missile.

-fractoid (anon to preserve moderations

Maybe that's one of the reasons that they were acquired by a US company. I'm sure AAI, along with other UAV developers, wants to move into the civilian market. The Iraq war (hopefully) won't last forever. Perhaps Aerosonde's experience wrangling with another civilian flight agency can be applied to the FAA as well.

This appears to be specific to the USA, other places in the world appear to have it sorted.

http://www.aerosonde.com/ "August, 21 1998 the Aerosonde Laima was the first unmanned aircraft to cross the north atlantic. The crossing was completed within 15 minutes of schedule after a flight of 3270 km in a time of 26 h 45 min."

While Aerosonde do work with Military and government agencies world wide (including the National Hurricane Centre, Miami, Florida, they are still a civilian organization who had to negotiate with the Australian CAA (Australian version of the FAA) and FAA's for flight authorisation in civil airspace and it was managed through NOTAMS etc. I visited them a few years ago, and they said the CAA were very welcoming to aligning the flight rules for UAV's.

The spectrum is already allocated for TCAS (Traffic Collsion Avoidance Systems), all the aviation radio communications & satellite comms for control etc, so what additional part of the spectrum makes UAV's difficult?

If you want to see something really cool, check out AeroSonde, an ultra-long-range model airplane.

I have fantasized about loading up a model with flyers and then leafletting north korea or some other freedom-of-information deprived hole.

Here is another unmanned vehicle that is quite cheap to make
and seems to do the job just as well called the aerosonde.
It is designed for gathering weather data etc. not probably what the military
wants.

Also it flew across the Atlantic.

With a normal V-tail, when rudder input is used, the required control deflection produces the correct yaw moment, but an *opposite* rolling moment (adverse roll), which fights the aileron (roll) input required to initiate the turn.
An inverted Vee (sometimes known as a lambda or 'A' tail), produces a rolling moment in the same direction as the yaw, helping roll the aircraft into the turn.

This seems to be quite popular in UAVs, eg. Aerosonde
and a few others (whose names escape me right now....)

I suppose I'm a pedant, but "endurance" means time aloft, not distance flown. This plane set a record for distance flown by a robotic plane, not the record for time aloft.

I can't see how less than 24 hours en route qualifies for an endurance record, since a small (10 foot wingspan) robotic propeller-driven plane called an "Aerosonde" crossed the atlantic in August 1998, taking about 26 hours 45 minutes. In fact, I seem to remember that /. carried that story, though I don't find it in a quick search.

I did find a few other stories from that time, though, at ABC and EXN, and you can always visit Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft if you are interested.

I think, but do not know, that there have been robotic flights longer in duration than that, but I don't have time to look for them now. :-)

I suppose I'm a pedant, but "endurance" means time aloft, not distance flown. This plane set a record for distance flown by a robotic plane, not the record for time aloft.

I can't see how less than 24 hours en route qualifies for an endurance record, since a small (10 foot wingspan) robotic propeller-driven plane called an "Aerosonde" crossed the atlantic in August 1998, taking about 26 hours 45 minutes. In fact, I seem to remember that /. carried that story, though I don't find it in a quick search.

I did find a few other stories from that time, though, at ABC and EXN, and you can always visit Aerosonde Robotic Aircraft if you are interested.

I think, but do not know, that there have been robotic flights longer in duration than that, but I don't have time to look for them now. :-)

Pretty impressive at first glance,
but when you consider what it costs
and the gazillions of dollars the USAF have thrown at it's development,
(and the fact that it's wingspan is around that of a 737), it starts looking
somewhat less impressive.

For some contrast, check out These guys