Slashdot Mirror
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."
not so. the Russian Ka-50 has an ejection seat - pull the handle and the rotor blades are blown off by an explosive; when they're clear the seat fires. I've heard rumors that the Comanche will have a similar feature, but there are always rumors about that kind of thing.
I don't have a link, sorry.
Is my Karma up to 50 yet? it's a slow day at work..
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
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.
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!
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
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.
"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.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
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