Slashdot Mirror
Autonomous Model Glider Flies from 60,000 Feet
saccade writes "A couple
years ago we read about a telemetry laden balloon launched
to 80,000 feet single-handedly built by a laid-off engineer. Here's an even more elaborate
one built at around the same time: A balloon launched model
glider taken to about 60,000
feet that autonomously finds its way home. It had an auto-pilot
and elaborate mission control system. Also impressive is the
extensive testing
done before launch."
I guess I'm just glad that when it "finds its way home" it doesn't define "home" as "the White House Lawn" - and that the laid-off engineer who built it isn't angry with the world.
Well, it is nice to see that people actually employs some time doing pretty impressive things. Not like the guy sitting in a chair hanging at 10000 feet using balloons. ;)
All I have to say is "WOW". And well done.
Carousel is a lie!
It can correct its flightpath, but it can't react to obstacles. A cliff would kill it, as would a tree.
What would happen if we dropped something intrinsically warm like a slab of uranium on Titan
Quick! Somebody call the Dept of "HomeSec" on this evildoer, before he makes his "homing glider" plans available to terrerhists like that DIY cruise missile guy tried to. And if they find any Estes model rocket engines in his home (while he's away, of course), I they throw the book at him!
Power to the Peaceful
No it doesn't, you americans are so paranoid. Just stop invading every middle eastern country your president can pronounce and you wont have a bunch of terrorists who hate your guts, works for the rest of the world.
you had me at #!
OTOH, he seems to have had some problems with navigation and obstacles (i.e., the mountain in the way), but I can't see how he can deal with that without using something like EGPWS. Standard GPWS (ground proximity warning systems) use radar and the power needs would be far to high. EGPWS extends this with a digital ground model and a GPS. He has the GPS, but whether he could make and store an model with terrain elevation would be an interesting question.
/.'s a little slow getting the headlines these days?
Research like this bodes well for future exploration of other planets. A glider, or better yet a powered aircraft, can cover more ground in an hour than Spirit and Opportunity have in a year. With the communications delay, it would have to be autonomous.
Landing to conduct experiments would be a one-time deal (unless it can take off again), but such a vehicle could do great recon for future rovers or human explorers, in addition to all sorts of atmospheric experiments.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
I built a glider that can find its way home from 60,000 feet in the air too. The only limitation is that "home" has to be directly below it. Apart from that, my glider, which I have named "SpaceBrick One", has a 100% success rate.
Uhm...S -700_Pri ntFriendly.html
t ml?smenu=105
http://www.rockwellcollins.com/ecat/at/FC
I'd say the answer is as soon as a 747 with a FCS-700A and a pilot that feels the need to use auto-landing durring an emergency all come together in the same part of the sky.
Here's the dope on the FCS-700A
Long version: http://www.rockwellcollins.com/ecat/at/FCS-700A.h
Short Version:
The FCS-700A is a fully digital, fail operational autopilot flight director system. The system, part of the Boeing 747-400 flight control system, performs tasks associated with flight director commands, speed selection, altitude selection, heading selection, autopilot, autoland, and system fault isolation. Utilizing the new FCC-703, system upgrades are much easier and less expensive due to the incorporation of dataload capability via either front connector or rear connector. The FCC-703 replaces the FCC-702, Collins part number 622-8787-106.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Uh, I don't know if you meant this to be intentional, but taking your "Drake's equation" and the last number I remember hearing for the US population:
(0.0001*0.001*0.1*0.5) * (population of US: ~200 million) = 1
I know that you were being cute, but figured some people wouldn't pick up on it.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
they already do, I saw a video where the pilots said the autoland is great in fog, zero visibility but the plane fined the runway, the real problem is taxing to the gate when you can't see out the window.
Anyway, it took me a while to find someone talking specificly about a 747 but here is a linkhttp://www.airliners.net/discussions/general_a viation/read.main/1882971/
Forget emergencies, try routine basis to keep certified, if you travel a lot, you probably have already been on an aircraft that has done an autolanding.
USE IT
A couple years ago we read about a telemetry laden balloon launched to 80,000 feet single-handedly built by a laid-off engineer. Here's an even more elaborate one built at around the same time: A balloon launched model glider taken to about 60,000 feet that autonomously finds its way home. It had an auto-pilot and elaborate mission control system. Also impressive is the extensive testing done before launch.
I was fascinated by this site when I first found it a few years ago. Unfortunately I failed to bookmark it at the time, and several attempt via Google failed. Thanks for digging it up for me!
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
The two stories mentioned in the article were the source for inspiration for me that caused me to start building a wheeled robot that I had been thinking about for a long time. I read the baloon story on Slashdot and then searched for more similar stuff online and I found the glider article. That was about a year ago - maybe a year and a half.
:)
n sai1.jp g
Today, the robot (which I call Bonsai) is ready. The goal for it was to be able to do a couple of fairly basic things that would allow it to be a platform for later ideas that could be built on the base work. The things it had to do were:
It had to be able to know where it was in the world, how it was oriented and moving in the world, and to be able to use that information to figure out how to drive to get from point A to point B (possibly through a complex path).
It had to be able to be manually controlled in addition to the automatic control.
It had to have a good remote control software complete with moving map, full telemetry of all functions on the robot, and the ability to command every function of the robot remotely.
It had to have a camera, and the remote control software had to be able to see the image from that camera real-time (or as close to real-time as possible).
It had to have a wireless communications link.
It would have to be able to operate at least 60 minutes.
It had to have a solid vehicle base that had to be able to operate for at least 60 minutes and be able to operate precisely and reliably.
The vehicle base would have to be able to carry the load of the computer, batteries, as well as a sizeble amount of additional electronics and equipment in the future.
The whole thing would have to look decent.
It took about a year to design and build, but it was very fun and in the end, it turned out to be fairly easy and nowhere near as expensive as I imagined it would be. Projects like that are a great way to learn new stuff about electronics and I highly recommend it to anyone who has been thinking about something like this. In the end, all the goals of the project were met, and I now have a really fun toy!
The URL below is a picture of the robot in its final form:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/macpeep/bonsai/bo
http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/misc/ATIVCRX.ht ml
Note the weird installer. It gave me the creeps but it worked.
cruise missiles which can loiter for weeks or months waiting for a target of opportunity?
Admittedly the balloons wouldn't exactly be able to do much station-keeping.
In ww2 the Japanese prepared bomb-carrying baloons and let them drift on the winds. IIRC some actually reached the Western coast of the USA. Naturally, nothing much came of them... even California is (or was then) just empty land.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.