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Invisible Unmanned Aircraft
MattSparkes writes, "A Minnesota company, VeraTech, has applied for a patent on an unmanned drone that is nearly invisible to the naked eye. The Phantom Sentinel takes advantage of the phenomenon where fast moving objects appear as only a blur, so it fades out of view once it speeds up. This is achieved by rotating the entire craft. The center of gravity is in open air between two of the blade-like wings. There are some videos of a prototype in action on the VeraTech site." The company says you could get usable video of the terrain by processing the images from a spinning camera. One version of the drone is small enough to launch by throwing it like a boomerang. And it folds for travel.
'Catch!'
'Ouch'
Is that really invisible? It looked like they just changed the focus of the camera. Plus, I really wouldn't want to be the pilot. Holy bed spins. Er, just kidding, but it really didn't look too invisible.
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
I see three poor quality videos that have been edited to make the craft blur out.
No no no, what you're seeing is the craft edited into the video in the first place. You can't see it normally 'cos it's invisible.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
The basic idea is that the plane flies by rotating and, just as a fan blade or propeller becomes close to invisible when spinning, this aircraft might too.
Of course visibility to the naked eye is only a very small part of invisibility. This thing probably sticks out like dogs balls on radar.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I opened the video in Kaffeine, and all I saw was a huge black square! Wow! These things are _really_ invisible!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The site has a photo of two kids in flea market knockoff BDUs. One is wearing set of, probably broken, VR goggles and the other has $7.99 Tasco folding binoculars around his neck.
Somehow I get the feeling these people are not going to impress anyone in US military procurement enough to get much more than laughed at.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
It would take another incredible invention to get usable photos from this thing, photos with any decent resolution. Seems like a fun toy, but how could a camera composite the images?
The Death Penalty: Killing people to show others that killing people is wrong.
Problem: new drone design rotates so quick the human eye can't see it.
Solution: strobing LCD glasses.
Once again a $50M defense project defeated by $30 worth of hardware.
Liberty you never use is liberty you lose.
Have a look at the site. The first two demo videos blur the craft out towards the end of the clip to give the impression of being invisible. I reality, the craft is not that invisible - it certainly has a center of rotation that is clearly visible, and in many ways it looks like a very large boomerang.
On of the largest drawbacks I can see is that the drone does spin around, and around and around. It will be very difficult to fit a useful payload on a craft like this. It's design is such that the cargo room for anything but the operational parts is severly limited. I might add, how does one determine the direction of travel when one's compass is constantly spinning around?
Also the amount of post processing needed to create a useful video feed from such a craft makes it almost impractical for use. Not to mention that other detection systems (IR comes to mind) would be largely incompatible with the operation of this machine.
Finally, the web site has clearly been created by the guy in the videos. It's also clear that he's completely infatuated with intellectual property. I think his craft is interesting, but in a novelty sort of way.
Military drones fly at extremely high altitudes. Thus, they don't have to worry about being spotted by the naked eye. They're also very small, so they have a little tiney-tiny radar cross-section, too -- making them look like a bird on most radar screens.
Basically, this sounds overly-complicated and expensive to implement and is utterly unneeded. So... the military may well go for it! But it's still completely retarded.
/dev/random
At this point in time I'd say it's the videos themselves.
Is it me, or do the boys in the article in fatigues look like they are like 13? Made for the Army, but cool enough for teens? Hmm, interesting!
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Invisible Plane?
I build one of these things years ago. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it since its first test flight.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Man, will they be pissed when they see this.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Did anybody else think of the similarity between VeraTech and Veritech of the Robotech anime? The article summary even says "...it folds..." - a transformation just like the Veritech Fighter to humanoid form!
I'm getting the feeling that their server is the thing that is really getting closer to becoming invisible, rather than their UAV.
First off its pretty clear this is an RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle), so no need to worry about anyone yakking up dizzy in the cockpit. Next it wont be invisible, itll be blurry to the eye. Thats still a good thing, itll make it harder to track, shoot, and be sure of what it has been up to.
What it wont be is unobtrusive. Its gonna be noisy, have a RADAR/LIDAR signature, and be putting out a fair bit of heat. So unless it is pretty high up folks will be aware it is around, unaided have a general sense of where, and with equipment (including IR goggles) probably be able pinpoint it fairly quickly.
As for images, yeah, crazy-spinning-photo-pans will probably be able to be reconstructed into something recognizable, but thatll require some significent processing power & are as likely to miss points of interest as they are to pan over them a few times.
However there are other missions where other sensors would be useful, ones not dependant on a specific field of view. Audio mapping. Radio mapping. Radiation sensing. Specific chemical tracing (mmm... smells like high explosives by that warehouse!)
Also dropping off small payloads could solve much of the in-motion issues, and if the craft is hard to see itll also be hard to figure out exactly where it has dropped off a suitable minituraized payload. Imagine what dropping your cellphone transmitting live audio & video into the middle of an armed camp would tell you. Next imagine if it was a device built to just do that, resembles a rock, and nobody is sure just where the drone was... Could it be found? Sure, eventually, after much disruption.
The device may be being heavily hyped, but it is a clever hack nonetheless and could have some real applications. And the next time I hear the annoying musquito-on-steroids whine of a model helicopter nearby I wont be so confident if I cant see it/it cant see me.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
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--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
The biggest problems of small and micro-UAVs are:
1. Requires line-of-sight to control them. This requires that a man often has to be in enemy territory in order for it to be useful.
2. Too small for larger payloads. This restricts their use to low-end optical cameras.
3. Fly close to the ground. This increases the likelyhood of them being seen by the enemy though being invisible would help in this case.
4. As mentioned above, getting a real-time feed of the cameras.
While it's a lot easier and cheaper for smaller companies to get into the micro-uav industry, it's the large UAVs that are the most practical. They can be controlled by sat links from anywhere in the world. They can broadcast the imagery over the same links to anywhere in the world from a small groundstation or the President's desk. They can carry large payloads allowing multi-spectrum cameras with super high resolution or Synthetic Aperature Radars (SAR) or even hell-fire missiles. They also can fly for 24 hours at a time from heights of 30,000 feet which essentially make them every bit as invisible as this micro-uav. In the end, it's the large UAVs like the Predator that are making the biggest difference in military actions as well as law enforcement and border control.
www.joshferguson.org
It's more of a question of the best tool for the job, IMO... The micro UAV's actually work quite well for Special Warfare teams, where the problems are more portability, quick launch, and short recon runs. You're absolutely right that the Predator drones are better for conventional warfare, but I think this was created to address a different set of requirements, and should do rather well from what I've seen (or not seen, as the case may be).
I've found that nurturing one's Zen nature is vital to dealing with technology. Violence is pretty damn useful too.