Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
Removing the dog balls from the B-2 bomber reduced its radar return by 42%.
Really.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.