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Aerial Robotics Competition

Posted by michael on Friday July 23, 2004 @08:41AM from the buzz-bomb dept.

anphilip writes "The annual International Aerial Robotics Competition just wrapped up, and I thought while our teams waited for the results I'd let the folks at Slashdot know about it. At any rate there's a brief story here and the group website is here."

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Re:Whoa by mikeophile · 2004-07-23 08:48 · Score: 4, Informative

She is.
It's not just bureaucracy... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-23 09:22 · Score: 3, Informative

There are a lot of considerations the military has to deal with that don't apply to "normal" situations.

The example of hiking gear is a good one. Sure you can sell all kinds of stuff to hikers who go out a couple of weekends a year... that's completely different from providing something to someone who is going to spend six months of every year in all kinds of outdoor environments from the desert to arctic/alpine climate. (Ask me how I know gear is used like this :-/ )

When I was in the 82nd, sure my pack was a lot heavier that what the average hiker carries into Yosemite. However, it survived 45 jumps (two where the lowering cord failed to deploy and I rode it in and landed on it, hard), two trips to the Italian Alps in the dead of winter, visits to the Siani and Turkey in summer, and getting thrown into holes, piled under dozens of similar packs, and whacked around during a couple dozen miscellanous deployments. Try that with a $400 external-frame pack from your local sporting-goods store and see what you get :-)

It may be that there are "secret" verisons of these in use (as another poster suggested) or there may be versions in R&D. But I'm willing to bet that ruggedizing things is (almost) as much a factor as the bureaucracy...