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Its been done. When you consider what a "pod and boom" platform UAV looks like, its pretty possible that a viewer at a distance might think it looks like a large dragonfly. They sound a small electric makes evens SOUNDS like a dragonfly "buz". Look here: http://www.aerovironment.com/UAS_products.asp

• Fighting fires, especially at night (current FAA regs prevent piloted aircraft from flying into fires at night)
• Mobile perimeter surveillance

More than 2 1/2 years old *sigh*

The OLD story

Lithium-Ion battery and 1.75 hours, according to this http://www.aerovironment.com/news/news-archive/was p62.html

The same team that built this Wasp built a smaller (!) micro air vehicle a couple of years earlier. This paper describes the design and implementation of the project at a good level of detail -- enough to show the complexity and tradeoffs in design, but not so much to bury the reader in equations and minutia.

What fascinates me about MAVs is that you can do absolute cutting-edge research on a shoestring budget. Many prototypes can be designed, analyzed, built, tested, and thrown away.

Thad Beier

From the company which designed it in 2002

The U.S. military (through DARPA and other agencies) has been funding research on micro-UAVs for years. Not too hard to think about what they would be good for if you change your mindset to try to solve the "problem" of being able to kill people more effectively.

Some interesting links:
Pretty scary justification for "why bother": http://www.darpa.mil/tto/mav/mav_auvsi.html
For those that don't know, an "ACD" is a program where they actually build a working weapons system out of the technology: http://www.darpa.mil/tto/programs/mavact.html
This is one of my favorate MAV's: http://www.aerovironment.com/news/news-archive/was p62.html
A general links page that shows the amount of research being done in this area: http://www.casde.iitb.ac.in/IMSL/amitay.html
FAS collects a ton of information about U.S. military programs and systems: http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/mav.htm

These UAVs aren't really that expensive. AeroVironment's first prototype of Helios that broke up in Hawaii (due to conditions at low altitude) cost around 3 million, which is dirt cheap. After production runs start, the cost usually drops considerably.

"taking extremely expensive, highly delicate, slow moving experimental air equipment into a warzone where the enemy posesses missiles is probably a stupid idea."

Helios also flew to 96,863 feet, setting a new world record for any winged flight (the SR-71 flew to 85,068 in 1976). A typical truck fired surface to air missile in Iraq has a maximum effective altitude of 32,808 feet (10,000 meters).

" [It would] cost more than running a cable to the area that couldn't connect to broadband in the first place."

The idea is to provide area coverage. UAVs circle high above a city to provide service to the entire city point to point. Theoretically, you could connect from any point in the city with a signal, rather than having to find a hard line that will give you access. Laying high bandwidth cable all over a large city is extremely expensive.

Maybe unneccessary but cool is having them flying near commercial airline routes overseas to provide data service on those long flights. But would they still charge $12/minute?

With their capability to stay aloft for more than 6 months, their design to carry a large scale telecommunications payload, the high altitude they fly at with the coverage this entails, and the low cost of production, UAV telecommunication platforms are pretty darn efficient and effective.

These UAVs aren't really that expensive. AeroVironment's first prototype of Helios that broke up in Hawaii (due to conditions at low altitude) cost around 3 million, which is dirt cheap. After production runs start, the cost usually drops considerably.

"taking extremely expensive, highly delicate, slow moving experimental air equipment into a warzone where the enemy posesses missiles is probably a stupid idea."

Helios also flew to 96,863 feet, setting a new world record for any winged flight (the SR-71 flew to 85,068 in 1976). A typical truck fired surface to air missile in Iraq has a maximum effective altitude of 32,808 feet (10,000 meters).

" [It would] cost more than running a cable to the area that couldn't connect to broadband in the first place."

The idea is to provide area coverage. UAVs circle high above a city to provide service to the entire city point to point. Theoretically, you could connect from any point in the city with a signal, rather than having to find a hard line that will give you access. Laying high bandwidth cable all over a large city is extremely expensive.

Maybe unneccessary but cool is having them flying near commercial airline routes overseas to provide data service on those long flights. But would they still charge $12/minute?

With their capability to stay aloft for more than 6 months, their design to carry a large scale telecommunications payload, the high altitude they fly at with the coverage this entails, and the low cost of production, UAV telecommunication platforms are pretty darn efficient and effective.

The the AeroVironment Pointer is a throw-to-launch spyplane that's been used since 1988. It's a bit bigger than this new toy, and is carried in a backpack. Special Operations types have been using the Pointer for years. It's great for looking over the next hill to find out what the enemy is up to. Flight duration is about an hour, although they have to use silver-cadmium batteries to get that.

Aeroenviroment, the company of which you speak, has done sevel cool projects. Their MAV's (micro air veichles) are the coolest. (pdf)

Aeroenviroment, the company of which you speak, has done sevel cool projects. Their MAV's (micro air veichles) are the coolest. (pdf)

The Helios unmanned high altitude vehicle was developed cooperatively by NASA's Dryden flight Research and SkyTower Communications A division of Aerovironment These can help you learn more about their research into 3G and broadband deployment over Japan. Also, you can view the press release on the crash here.

Here we have a commercial project, done by a private company, and partially funded by the Japanese Ministry of Telecommunications. And there's NASA, taking the credit.

Coming soon to a theater of combat near you:
Puma

The Black Widow (.pdf only, sorry) by AeroVironment doesn't hover but it's designed for just such a purpose.

I'd be happy to get either one for my birthday, thanks.

When looking at the world through a remote video camera without the benefit of an artificial horizon and other instrumentation, it's very easy to get a small model into a spin or spiral from which it is difficult to recover. Being able to directly see the model from the ground is the only safe way to ensure you can regain control in such situations.

The problem is one of orientation -- once you lose view of the horizon through the camera it becomes very difficult to tell what your plane is doing -- thus very difficult to feed in the proper control corrections.

What about automatic pilots, though? For example, the AeroVironment Black Widow, which is a six-inch aircraft, has "altitude hold, airspeed hold, heading hold, and yaw damping" (from the PDF available on their site).

With bigger r/c vehicles, total autonomous flight was achieved a long time ago, even for helicopters, which are much more difficult to stabilize than planes. This can allow an operator to simply guide rather than actually pilot a vehicle, with greatly reduced chance of error.

This already exists in commercial technology: there's an r/c helicopter, made by Honda iirc, used for applications like cropspraying and aerial photography. An operator can fly these with minimal training, because stabilization is automatic.

On August 13, 2001 on its second high altitude flight, Helios flew to 96,863 feet, shattering the world altitude record for both propeller and jet-powered aircraft (the SR-71 spy plane was the previous record holder, having flown to 85,068 feet in July 1976).

Not only are they working on building a large, long-endurance airplane, they're also working on a small, short-endurance spy plane. The basic idea is you take a briefcase to where you're interested in looking at something, open the case, set up a small antennae and launch a little hand-held plane to go snoop around. There's a paper on how they built the plane near the bottom of this page.

The USMC has had the AeroVironment Pointer for about a decade now. This is a model airplane with a TV camera, small enough to be carried in a backpack. It's Kevlar, and powered by silver-zinc batteries (which, by the way, are great, but cost too much.) Range of a few miles, endurance of maybe an hour. (The maker says 1.5 hours, reports say 30 minutes.) Toss into the air, fly over the hill, and get a small-screen peek at the enemy. Moderately useful, not overdesigned, and reasonably rugged. For example, landing is done by coming in low, pulling up into a stall, cutting the power, and crashing tail-first, the typical model airplane bad landing.

...before some enterprising company ditches the satellites and offers drone shots with much higher resolution. The drone technology is nothing new. If the area is hostile, you can use tiny disposable drones

From a technical standpoint, none of this is very exciting. The only real limitation is what your government will allow you to sell to the general public. In some cases, the government will do it for you with a camera on a regular old plane.

Of course, the other issue is privacy...

Uh.. actually, that is *almost* one of the proposed
uses for these things. Check out:
SkyTower Telecommunications
or
AeroVironment

i've been watching this Helios story for a couple of months now. the company that designed & built Helios (w/ NASA) is AeroVironment, founded by Paul McCready (of Gossamer Albatross fame). there are some pretty cool commercial applications intended for this program.

I agree,

But These are where to look:

Discovery Channel MUAV page
Aerovironment's Black Widow
Black Widow development (pdf)

I agree,

But These are where to look:

Discovery Channel MUAV page
Aerovironment's Black Widow
Black Widow development (pdf)

Would you seriously use a service that won't work in heavy winds and rain?
At that height (50K+ feet), it doesn't rain, I can assure you.
They should use the AeroVironment UAV instead of pilotted aircraft?

Rumor has it the company I worked at sent a cockroach up to 80,000 feet on one of their high-altitude solar-powered missions (incidentally setting the altitude record for propellor-powered flight).

It didn't make it.