Slashdot Mirror

Aerovironment has demonstrated 250kW 330A 700V charger to CARB about a decade ago.
http://evsolutions-dev.avinc.c...
It has Chademo compatibility.
It is sad that Tesla went fragmenting charging infrastructure with their closed proprietary protocol/network, or 2 incompatible Tesla networks for different regions of the world. It doesn't help EV adoption whatever you say.

According to this the $350K is for a complete system and not a single aircraft.

A complete system (controller, spare parts, and three UAVs) costs $250,000 for the Raven and over $400,000 for Puma.

The price for a single aircraft is much closer to $100k.
Take a look at the capabilities of the Puma. The optics, communications, and autonomous navigation features are not cheap.

I would guess the major cost is in an on-board instrument system for making scientific measurements.

According to this the $350K is for a complete system and not a single aircraft.

A complete system (controller, spare parts, and three UAVs) costs $250,000 for the Raven and over $400,000 for Puma.

The price for a single aircraft is much closer to $100k.
Take a look at the capabilities of the Puma. The optics, communications, and autonomous navigation features are not cheap.

(differences in size and flight range are not inconsiderable between commercial drones and hobbyist vehicles).

Really? I'll grant you the difference between hobbyist UAVs and drones like this, but what about this, this, and this?

(differences in size and flight range are not inconsiderable between commercial drones and hobbyist vehicles).

Really? I'll grant you the difference between hobbyist UAVs and drones like this, but what about this, this, and this?

(differences in size and flight range are not inconsiderable between commercial drones and hobbyist vehicles).

Really? I'll grant you the difference between hobbyist UAVs and drones like this, but what about this, this, and this?

Also, most of those drones are ity-bity guys that are hand launched or portable.

• Shadow wingspan 14'
• Hunter wingspan 30'
• Predator wingspan 50'
• Warrior/Grey Eagle wingspan 56'

The only "small" ones I found were a handful of Ravens with 4.5' wingspan and Pumas, usually co-located with some Shadows.

http://www.avinc.com/uas/small_uas/raven/
10km range

only 50k

(this should tell you are way outta budget line)

The unencrypted communications were probably from much simpler, tactical drones, like the Aerovironment Robin. The more sophisticated drones communicate through satellites for both command uplink and video downlink -- these would almost certainly be encrypted from the very first time.

Depending on the size and complexity of the drone, I would wire up an appropriately-sized radio control airplane(or copter) with a camera and a light payload of explosive, probably using a servo instead of electronic signal as the detonator for safety reasons. It would be more expensive than firing off a few rounds, but the fact that the oppressors paid a hundred or even a thousand times more for their drone than I did would be worth it.

Stick with rifles, you'll have a hell of a time hitting it with an RC aircraft and they're more likely to know you did it - with the rifle you can shoot from a concealed location and disappear before they can find you. Either way, gunshots or flying explosive charges around, your're in jail when caught.

Drones (and drone operators) are extremely ill-suited to dealing with level playing fields. But you're right about everything else, though. Guess its time to move to a rural area, growing and hunting all of my food and saving up enough money to flee the country before its military is turned loose against the general population.

Point of the article is that drones are shrinking. Sure, the Predator is the size of a 707, but take a look at Switchblade, smaller than the RC plane you can get at your hobby shop, faster too, not cheaper, but it costs less than your legal fees will trying to deal with the legal charges you'll face for putting RC explosives into the air.

The rural area plan sounds good, but unless you can afford hundreds of acres, it's not much more secure than living in a normal city. And, as for fleeing, to where? Try to take comfort in the fact that we've got less than 1% of our population in the military, half of them as reservists, even if the military does consume nearly 5% of our GDP, those numbers have been generally falling from 10% of GDP and more soldiers (in absolute numbers) in 1960.

That Wii U photo makes it look a whole lot like one of several makes of Small UAV hand controllers.

A lot of work goes into the ergonomics of these things, because soldiers spend a lot of time using them, so there's a reason they all look very similar. Several ergonomic factors, obvious from the convergence of these designs, appear to be universal:

- Touchscreens are sexy but impractical. They're imprecise without a stylus, awkward to hold, and you have to obscure your view of the action to effect a control.
- It's nearly impossible make the screen too large. There's a reason the screen is big and dominates the faces of all of these units.
- Controls are arranged on the sides so that the fingers can take the weight while the thumbs work the controls without requiring the user adjust his grip.
- Control paradigms are borrowed from the original Playstation hand controllers because most users have prior experience with them.
- Light weight tradeoff against battery life, screen size, and ruggedness.

Looks like the convergence is happening from both directions. And it's not surprising because the human interface requirements are very similar in both applications.

> fast moving blades

Well, not all windpower generators take their design from 300yr old Dutch models; some companies remember we're in the 21st century. On their website there's a picture of their system on a low-rise apartment building; it's so invisible it could placate the most rabid NIMBY-ite.

> free poultry

Some companies are even putting grates in front of their blades. I do find it amusing when people become so concerned about the fauna when you talk about renewables when they never care about the small animals taken out by transformer stations unless said animal 'terrorist' kills himself as a blow against human imperialism against his species.

There is NO SMARTER thing you could do with money than dump it on the head of a young MacCready!

He wasn't interested in Human Powered Flight either, no one should be! But he was the guy responsive enough to beat out the competition and win the prize, and save his company.

Now his company is using similar tech to make Solar Powered perpetually flying aircraft which hopefully will soon make communications satelites obsolete.

And they are also making a lot of those mini-drone aircraft our boys and girls in Iraq are relying on... (I'm no fan of the Iraq Colony, but I do want the troops to come home safe.)

The Kremer Prize was an incredible success!

You will never see human powered practical aviation. At least not until "humans" get stronger. But you are already seeing the benefits of pushing technology to the limit and exploiting the new materials and construction techniques.