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Micro Air Vehicles
Offwhite98 writes "Over at The Gainesville Sun they are running an article about really small planes used to watch all kinds of stuff. I am sure the common applications for these devices are pretty clear, but if you could use these for a lot of fun. Use 10 of them as flying candid cameras at a wedding or a party and you I am sure you will get interesting results." A little bigger than the Spy Fly but probably much more robust.
"The planes are operated by remote control and range in cost from about $700 to as much as a couple of thousand dollars depending on the type of video equipment used. "
... i would like to see someone shoot down 100 of these after they were droped out the window of a b52.
don't i remeber reading the air force where spending 100's of millions on uav's
Cruise TT
http://autopilot.sourceforge.net/
-- http://www.swcp.com/~hudson/
I've often wondered how many flying saucer stories started out with somebody spotting an experimental aircraft test.
"Use 10 of them as flying candid cameras at a wedding or a party and you I am sure you will get interesting results"
Yeah, like the planes crashing into each other and then into the guests, cake, etc.
While this is a very cool technology, and quite the advancement, I wonder how practical it is. Like large aircraft, it has many limitations on movement: forward or... forward. Take his football kickoff example: it would follow the kickoff, and then would loose the ball in the time it takes to circle around the other way.
Wouldn't this have been more useful if it were based off a more maneuverable platform such as a helicopter?
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
...the nanotech devices which are so light they don't need to fly, just float with flagellum for guidance mechanisms.
Gotta read "Diamond Age" again soon, it was a good read.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
You cant possibly hire enough people to fly each of these planes if you use them for surveillance. Working in an institute that is heavily involved in modern forms of AI I can assure you that the number of crashing /dying planes will be immense.
Its really difficult to make a driving robot come back home. They always hit things or are very slow.
These planes better be really cheap! And the firms that deliver them will have to deliver them in the millions if a few hundred of them are to be in the air at any point of time.
Googlefight "Slashdot Troll" against "BSD is dying" 303:229. BSD thus cant die.
PLIF .
a3c6 0e89 b1ec aa4d d630 26c8 d07e 7eed 8148 5503 02b4 dfaa 9922 b28d 0820 c4af
For those that are interested here is a news release from the competition held in Utah.
c hi ve02/apr/miniairplane.htm
http://unicomm.byu.edu/news1/mynews/releases/ar
What's a Sig???
How long until the porn industry does something with one of these?
"The first erotic feature to include low-level fly bys of all the action!"
I actually attend class in the same building at University of FL as the micro-planes people. I attended a demonstration which was way cool.
They've developed an algorithm that can scan the horizon and auto-determine the horizon. In a side-by-side comparison between a human pilot and computer, the human could make you very sick. The vidoe jumps as the plan flys very erratically. With the computer algorithm, the plane flies smooth.
Another note, they use a PC to do the processing. The demo guy actually has an Apple laptop and runs all the video in quicktime. The PC processes the avi quicktime video, and returns the flight control info to the micro-flight airplane.
Another not, they are funded heavily by the DOD.
Another problem is fuel. The micro-planes only have enough fuel for a few times around a football field, and their range is similarly limited.
Finally, the coolest video they have is where the plane tracks a moving vehicle, and follows behind it.
Torsten
Ya know folks... Just because something isn't very useful to the common public, doesn't necessarily mean that it is entirely useless.
I'm sure there are TONS of commercial/industrial uses that can't be predicted just yet...
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
robots.net frequently has articles on Micro Air Vehicles and Micromechanical Flying Insect robots. The Berkley MFI Project Overview is another good place to get more info.
de plane, de plane.... de really, really small plane!
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Results like:
Shitty aerial footage of your wedding or party ("Honey, get the dramamine - I want to watch our wedding video again!")
Guests getting whacked in the eye with a spinning propeller
Stopping your party every ten minutes so you don't miss anything while the batteries recharge
Yeah, these things will totally make my party rock!
A segment on Discovery Magazine, aired on the Discovery channel recently, covered these MAVs and showed some guy who'd fitted several of his model airplanes with cameras.
As someone who's also done this I can tell you that it's still important to have the vehicle in direct visual line of site if you want to be sure and get it back.
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.
If it weren't a breach of copyright I'd post the DivX video I made of that Discovery broadcast -- it was really quite interesting.
A tremendously slimmed down Cypher... although these little guys probably won't lob grenades at you.. Wasn't there something like this in Perfect Dark?
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
One of the Lockheed employee newsletters ran a story on these recently.
They don't seem to have any of it that I can find on the web but I did run across this site that has some good info on what DARPA, Lockheed and others are doing in this area.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It's probably not the best example, but the Avrocar comes to mind. It's tantalizing, because it was an actual flying saucer that was being developed just when the flying saucer stories started to become commonplace. The funny thing is that, although the project was secret, it wasn't to hide it from the Soviets. Avro was more concerned about other aircraft companies with deeper pockets, that could have leapfrogged their development effort if they'd gotten wind of it.
I was just thinking about that book, while reading this...
The basic gyst is that people stage fights with each other, film them, and then sell the films.
Actually, that was just a minor point of the overall story. But it was stilla cool idea. Also, the cameras hovered, so you can't really think of them as planes.
If you want to see another story where floating cameras get a lot of treatment, try Farewell Horizontal, by K.W. Jeter.
It's out of print, though, so you'll have to hit a used bookstore.
Get off my launchpad!
Sure a balloon couldn't manuever quite so fast, but it would have a much improved range.
Ok, people are talking about these not being suitable for much because they can't hover or, have too large turning circles. Also, i see people are complaining about the cost and the battery life. Heres my idea.
Humming-birds have wings and can hover. They also have the ability to fly for extended periods, and when they get tired they can perch on the nearest ledge. Obvously, technology is not at the stage where this could be easily implemented into a Humming-bird sized package, and cheaply. However, Humming-birds themselves are relatively plentiful. What if, you attached a minature camera and transmitter to.. a Humming-bird? "But you cant control it!!" i hear you say. What if, you attached electrodes in such away that you could control, or atleast influence the flight. The bird would still keep priority control for dodging obsticles and landing when tired, but you would be able to control the basic directional element, and the direction of the camera. If you employed a flock of Humming-birds you could maintain a good deal of coverage for any event. Also, Humming-birds come with AI and basic flight control systems built in reducing the need for on-board electronics witch in turn reduces weight. For example, the bird has a built in gyroscope and can automatically 'right itself and maintain level flight.
The battery life of the camera could also be extended by attaching the power and/or data cables to the bird and having them trail behind, this would also prevent the bird from going out-of-range.
The millitary applications for this are also good - since no-one would look twice at a Humming-bird on a battle feild, they could be fitted with explosive devices to create humming-suicide-bombers (although the payload would be small).
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Check out http://www.spyplanes.com . $30K and you can buy a fully autonomous 5 foot wingspan plane (folds down to fit in a golf bag!) with a built-in gyro-stabilized camera. MLBco also makes a 6" remote-controlled MAV that has a mini camera and radio transmitter in it -- it's demonstrated a 20 minute flight time at 60mph. You can't see this thing if it's more than half a mile away; you have to pilot it using the video downlink.
Everyone is going to be thinking of video applications... but what I want is audio. The ability to place a mic anywhere in a room arbitrarily would make me happy.
Of course noise is going to be a problem, and hovering too, but that's my wish.....
Tweet, tweet.
To scout for cops hiding behind bushes etc. when i am speeding on the highway. hehe... takes the radar-gun / radar-detector war to a whole new level.
i'd imagine they make it illegal for spy-cams to fly above the speeding limit, though. (or just outlaw them on public highways outright.) if, that is, too many people start using it for that purpose.
actually i thought about building something for that (a bit larger, though), but havn't got the chance to yet. will keep y'all posted
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Airplanes use aerodynamics to gently finesse lift out of the air.
Helicopters are so ugly the ground repels them.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
A helicopter stands still by furiously blowing air downwards. This could easily blow the football off its direction.
OK, now I know what's been nagging at me... in Raymond Z. Gallun wrote a story which appeared in "Astounding Stories" in August, 1936, and which I read as a kid in Groff Conklin's anthology, "Science Fiction Thinking Machines."
... was a tiny thing, scarcely more than an inch and a half in length... it dipped in its flight and its quart-lensed eyes took in the scene below.... Excited shouts and cries were detectable to the sensitive, microphonic ears of The Scarab...."
"The Scarab
It flies miles, into the room where the Bad Guys are broadcasting an extortion request: they will kill a million citizens unless "all available radium in the country is brought to our laboratory."
"The mind that controlled the Scarab had seen and heard enough. Now it decided that the moment in which to act had come. With a whir the Scarab shot from the concealing shadows of the corner where it had hidden itself." It injects an anesthetic; the Bad Guy loses consciousness; the nation is saved.
The brilliant, crippled, wheelchair-confined detective explains "A fella can't just sit around, you know. And so I got to thinking that if I had a little radio-controlled robot to do my crook-chasing for me--well, anyway, I wrote a letter to our good friend Dr. Clyde Allison, explaining my situation... after a while the Scarab and all the controls that deliver it were delivered here.... "
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Imagine the tabloids getting ahold of these things. Already stars have people climbing fences and using telephoto lenses.
Now, just pop a drone in the air and overfly the target. How about flying up to the window of a high rise building?
Add a microphone, instead of video camera, for a twist.
Once they get these babies to HOVER, they will be fantastic. Not that they aren't now.
Imagine automatically dispatching a micro drone to check out a disturbance/noise from the safety of security central? Your camera can't see behind the tree? Fly around it.
Add a little radar and do some 3D terrain mapping...
ad infinitum
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
then Imagine Saddam swatting a pesky misquito not realizing that it cost 10 million dollars to manufacture.
Table-ized A.I.
MAV is singularly unimaginative. 'Electric Sparrow' is the obvious better choice.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Either:
There is some sort of 'aero geek chic' I don't know about
We're witnessing the visual manifestation of genetic selection for an obsession with small flying objects
This is the early stages of an alien invasion.
c .shtml
Look again: http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/07/27/flying microbots.ap/index.html
and: http://www.gainesvillesun.com/articles/2002-07-31
Somebody else posted the project. If you're not in a hurry these folks might provide a nice solution for you.
"Working in an institute that is heavily involved in modern forms of AI I can assure you that the number of crashing /dying planes will be immense" Um. . are you smoking crack? I know for a FACT (having a roomie that's a pilot) that commercial autopilots can handle damn near the ENTIRE flight as is. In fact there is an article in this months Scientific American (or is it Discovery?) detailing the work. I suggest you read the article (and do a bit of research) before commenting on it. These are not AI's. They've got very very little to do with a true AI.
Find out about my new childrens book: SS Death Camp Criminal Batallion Go To Monte Carlo For The Massacre
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.
"...where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally
swallowed by a small dog."
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
I figure it won't be long until someone starts mentioning security and privacy concerns in this thread, much the same as in the Spy Fly thread. The potential for privacy breaches with this kind of technology (taken to its final stupidity) is mind boggling. However, there are several easy methods of maintaining your security and privacy. The first and perhaps most effective means would be to have some kind of device that generates a lot of electromagnetic waves or interference. Simply sweep a room with a big electromagnet and you will either short the bug out or pull it right onto the thing for you to crush, contain, whatever. Second would be an EMP device. Such a device would be decidedly more effective and thurough than an electromagnet, but I think its a bit impractical because of the side effects. Sure, you'd short out any bugs that might be spying on you, but you'd be reduced to either magnetically shielding everything you own or living like the Amish. A third option would be to introduce some kind of predator. Either develop countermeasure bugs or natural predators that prey on the look-alike species. A countermeasure bug would merely have to home in on transmitting sources to find their targets. Natural predators wouldn't be as good, though, as they wouldn't adhere to any schedules for debugging, and you would also have to care for and clean up after them, etc. I'm sure there are other means out there as well, but this is all I could think of at the moment.
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
Yeah, I could see us using a suicide bomer humming bird in the middle east. So a bunch of guys are standing around with their big guns, then this bird comes out of nowhere and explodes in their faces. Yeah, it probably wouldn't kill anyone, but it sure would freak them out!
:P
A couple minutes later, a flock flies towards them...
Run away!
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet