The Wasp Micro Air Vehicle

Victor Cheng writes "In developments that bring together a variety of technologies including robotics and digital imaging the Wasp Micro Air Vehicle is one of the Pentagon's latest tools currently in testing of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (although I'm thinking its not going to need a carrier to get this one up and flying). The 13 inch Wasp comes equipped with 2 video cameras, GPS and has a myriad of possible applications. Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."

Comments

Privacy

[soniCron88]

"Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."

Like hell I'd pay for it. Gov't should be think twice before spying on its citizens. Especially at such a close range!

Re:Privacy

[Richthofen80]

The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre. If the government wishes to spy on its own citizens, there are far more effective means. There are a large number of survelliance cameras in the US and elsewhere, not to mention satellite imagery and 'bugs'.

The reasons they build UAVs in the first place is because they can't bring agents into the area, because its still too hostile. I hardly think a family picnic is so 'hostile' as to require a UAV.

If you buzzed and took pictures at my picnic

[Moraelin]

I do believe you'd get that thing swatted, stomped and whacked with a hammer/shovel/whatever-is-handy for good measure too. And you might be looking at a lawsuit too.

Basically I see the point in this thing, but the metaphor in the summary is an awful one. That it's useful for a lot of other things, is obvious. But using it to annoy others and invade their privacy, is one use I'm not entirely looking forward to.

One possible application

[Moggie68]

Search operation at sea. A couple of platoons of these could cover countless square kilometers in a hurry. You'd only need the spotters to monitor the video feed for any found subjects. Half the manpower as you'd skip the need for pilots.

Surveillance

[elgatozorbas]

A few years ago we had a master's thesis (jointly with the military school) evaluating the design of such a vehicle. These vehicles are mostly meant for observation, and can even be equipped with a radar (which was the case).

The main challenge is, not surprisingly, the weight. One of the trade-offs we were faced with was wether to do signal processing on the plane (requiring more CPU), or on the ground (requiring more link capacity). Another problem is that, because it is so small, it is very prone to wind, vibrations etc which have to be taken into account when post-processing

Re:Swat it?

[MyLongNickName]

I don't think it is THAT big. It will be very useful for keeping an eye on a small area (say a block in Falluja) without being obvious. No, it is not designed to fly five foot over Osama without it being noticed. But this doesn't make it useless.

Re:Swat it?

[hey!]

Suppose they had an autonomous surveillance vehicle that was literally the size of a housefly. Do you think they'd tell us?

Not that I think such a thing could be built right now, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't on somebody's drawing board. American needs intelligence and loves technical fixes. If there's a technical solution to an intelligence problem, somebody's bound to be workig on it. Remember how US Navy subs tapped Soviet undersea communication cables right in their harbors?

I actually surprised they acknowledge that something this size exists. It's small enough that it is probably hard to distinguish from a sea bird.