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MIT's Acrobatic Helicopter
YourHero writes: "MIT has a new toy, a remotely-piloted helicopter that's agile, stable, and in the current public mood, perfect for urban combat and reconnaisance and surveying disaster sites. Oh, and it's also good for aerial photography. It's so good that it even does 360-degree aileron rolls at the flick of a switch. The release gives some basics, videos and other juice are here.
This cost $40k, excluding labor, because technically, student labor is "priceless" - so a nod to Kara Sprague, Alex Shterenberg, Ioannis Martinos, Bernard Mettler, and Vlad Gavrilets, who probably provided most of the labor. Stringfellow Hawk has not been reached for comment."
Yet despite all of the physics and scientific perfection...
;)
...there is still no Helicopter Ejection Seat
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Now I can easily move my storm troopers and GI Joe's into battle without risk of a human pilot falling into harms way!
Stringfellow Hawk has not been reached for comment
untill this thing can go mach one and lift ernest borgnine, i really doubt stringfellow hawk will need to comment...
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
I don't know if it has ever been done on a helicopter per sae, but there have been ejection seats that went out the _bottom_ of the aircraft.
:)
I think the F102 (or one of the other supersonic, large-single-vertical-fin fighters) had one of these.
Just don't pull the handle during taxi.
DG
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This quote from the article is probably the most important piece of information. The last decade has seen so massive advancements in our understanding of nonlinear dynamics and how they can be applied to engineered systems. Problems with traditionaly engineering approaches are that we often have to assume nonlinear systems (i.e. everything in the real world) are "linear about a point". While this is fine for some problems, like automobile suspension systems, it's just not sufficient for tasks like control complex airflow, predicting weather patterns, or driving robots across uneven systems.
As nonlinear analysis techniques become more and more prominent in engineering design, we'll start to see more and more of these technologies which can accomplish extremely difficult technical challenges.
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Check out the IARC competition website. There are teams' webpages linked from there, too. My school (UT Austin) is planning its first ever entry for the 2002 competition. .60 Gas Graphite by Miniature Aircraft USA).
The task this year is to fly 3 kilometers along 4 waypoints, identify a building and an open entrance on the building, deploy a subvehicle (not necessary, but practically necessary) through the entrance, and have the subvehicle return reconaissance to the judges 3km away.
Many people opt to use R/C helicopters and modify them (we are using an XCell
Dude, that doesn't make any sense. Just because the studios can use a cheap drone helicopter doesn't mean they would have to give up professional cameramen. Furthermore, it brings all kinds of different cinematography to the table, without the need for CG.
Even for the military, there isn't much need for a maneuverable drone.
What are you basing this statement on? I would say it's very clear the military definitely has a need for small, cheap, maneuverable drones. Between combat and safety, I can think of a myriad of applications for these.
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As stated above, its been done and for a LOT cheaper. Yes I read the information and its a little different, but not really... Most modern advanced radio controlled heli's (just like this one) are simple enough to fly with some practice and are all computer controlled already. I can make my helicopter do a loop and a roll without me doing anything but flicking a switch. Its very simple with the computer radios and some simple commands input into the radio. Yes, its stable and I have used my heli to take pictures too. Total cost to me so far ~$2500.
An optimist believes we live in the best world possible; a pessimist fears this is true.
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Imagine this: The Pentagon offers to transport, arm, and fuel home-built drone aircraft to fly against Al Qaeda. Your aircraft must meet the following requirements:
- On-board GPS
- On-board video capability
- Must be controlled via a soon-to-be-built wireless IP network in (let's say Somalia)
- 500-pound payload
From the comfort of your home, you can patrol your Pentagon-assigned territory, and engage targets as designated by the JSTARS targeting system.I figure the Pentagon can probably turn a profit by charging fees as they provide what is essentially the world's most realistic flight simulator. As an added bonus, they could sell the TV rights to the on-board video. Wouldn't it be fun to watch "The World's Most Terrified Terrorists"? Imagine what the MIT folks could build for this mission!
I think the most ironic part of the whole idea is that it turns the tables on the bad guys. Under this scenario, their most terrfying time of day would be when school gets out in the US. "Oh no! Schools out! Everyone head for the caves!"
What a neat application for embedded Linux.
Unlike the academic projects, you can download our code and contribute!
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The Comanche costs (will cost? may cost? link is from 1997) $26M each. Even at the current cost that means approximately 650 of these helecopters for the cost of one Comanche. They are (were?) taking about buying 1600 Comanche helicopters. That works out to 1,040,000 drones for the same cost.
Imagine you add a saturday night special to the helicopter and you send a million of these things sweeping into Iraq. Now the only problem is finding enough trained pilots.
Wait. Scratch that thought. I just had a vision of a million, unsupervised 14 year old boys in control of armed, remote control helicopters.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
There are a lot of places in filmmaking where remote-control helicopters are useful.
For instance, all the aerial shots in 'Walking with Beasts' were done with a RC Helicopter - it is substantially cheaper, especially if you need film somewhere remote.
This thing seems way too small to fit some kind of weapon. For this to be useful in combat, it'd have to carry a machinegun or maybe a small rocket launcher. A machinegun with 1000 rounds would weigh, say, 15-20 kg, and the recoil would probably be too big for this chopper.
The recoil of a rocket launcher, on the other hand, would be minimal. Problem is to aim the pod, since you can not adjust fire during firing in the same way - since you would carry only, say, 10 rockets. The aiming problem would mean you'd probably have to include hydraulics for tilting and rotating the pod, wich means more weight.
'course, you could just pack the thing with 15 kgs of plastic explosive, fly it into a building full of your opponents of choice, and set it off.
The Hellfire missile used on the Predator UAV, for example, weighs 45 kgs. Obviously, this is too much for this litte chopper.
I wonder how this extra weight affects flight performance. Does anyone have any more info on this?
Score:-1, Wrong
"Wait. Scratch that thought. I just had a vision of a million, unsupervised 14 year old boys in control of armed, remote control helicopters."
Did you ever watch the Robin Williams movie _Toys_? They were basically doing this. The movie, while not being *good* per se, is a pretty interesting watch, if just for the visuals.
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This looks like a great and low-cost way for radio stations to do away with sending reporters up in helicopters to cover traffic. Back in 1993 WNBC listeners throughout New York City were listening to one such broadcast and heard the copter crash, killing the reporter and pilot. Many other such crashes have occurred over the years. With luck, this MIT copter could make it obsolete to send traffic reporters in the air.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
(Old US Army Aviator speaking here)
.5G
Every effort at creating an ejection system for US rotary wing aircraft has been met with irristable resistance by the Aviators.
One methid, firing the seat through the floor. That is fine if you are an airforce guy at FL 2 zillion, but for us the ground is about 10 to 50 feet below the aircraft when we are most likely to need an ejection seat.
Second, not many of us like having explosives strapped around the rotor head at any time.
Third, most of us are not all that confidant that the firing sequence would work every time, i.e., not trusting the explosives in the head to blow early enough for the blades to clear the path of the seat flying up through the plane of the rotor disk.
One glairing item from this story:
HELICOPTERS HAVE NO AILERONS! They might mean a "snap roll" or a 360 degree z axis roll, but there are no ailerons on a helicopter.
This is nothing new anyway, any fully articulated rotor system OR rigid rotor system, with a powertrain posessing enough power, can safely do rolls, loops, etc. Don't try this at homw with your UH-1 or OH-58/Jetranger or Longranger, they have semi-rigid rotor systems that will break if you try to maneuver at less than
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
That is an increadable piece of coding..only 12,000 lines to do real-time control and the snazzy aerobatics! Kara Sprague deserves a programming medal! Way to go!
ttyl
Farrell
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It couldn't carry much firepower, but it could probably manage a targeting laser to paint a target for a long range missle or even shell that had terminal guidance by laser...
The main site is posted here. But basicly CMU is also doing this, and has gotten very far. It can track a person running around a field with a life-vest. It can also lower some object into a person's hand. This might seem easly, but this is still all autonomous. One of the big projects this is for is the Coast Guard wants these to quickly find and possibly help people in the oceans. Teams of these things can scan the ocean for people while the choper with people are just loading up. Check out the videos on the site, very cool stuff.
Al Queda could do the same thing to us from the comfort of an operator's La-Z-Boy.
Careful what we wish for...