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Ultra-Light Micro Air Vehicles
Roland Piquepaille writes "Dutch engineers have built the third generation of the DelFly autonomous air vehicle. The DelFly Micro made its first public flight earlier today in Delft. This micro air vehicle weighs only 3 grams and has a wingspan of 10 centimeters. This very small remote-controlled aircraft carries a 0.4 gram camera. The DelFly Micro, which looks like a dragonfly, can fly for 3 minutes at a maximum speed of 5 meters/second. It could be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas."
Danny Dunn to the white courtesy phone, please ...
There's a video of the DelFly Micro in action here. It takes flight about a minute and a half in.
You'd still notice this in the girl's shower.
5 meters/s is 10 mph, which is not much in terms of wind speed (about gale force 2). Or are these designed for use indoors?
I'll show this thing a dangerous area.
I do hope Santa has a good stock of these come Christmas time. I just have to persuade my wife I really do _need_ one of these.
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
and then no pictures or videos are shown!
What's wrong with people?
3 minutes is not very useful. By the time you reach your destination and actually get some good images, you've run out of time to return and have effectively lost your MAV. If they are meant to be throw-away, this is not a design flaw.
From my experience as an RC pilot, the smaller the craft, the more difficult it is to control. I would be curious to see how they've overcome the twitchiness of a such light weight.
Bearded Dragon
I imagine that this thing is pretty difficult to fly. With it going that fast, the camera would be jumping around all over the place. How can this practically be used for observation flights? You'd have to analyze it frame-by-frame.
WTF!!
It's cool an all, but why wouldn't they capture the video coming from the DelFly itself and also show that?
Maybe it can't capture video and fly at the same time?
What happens if one of these gets sucked into a jet engine? Are they small and soft enough to not cause problems?
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
.. equipped this thing with a small weapon, it would:
"Fly like a Butteryfly, Sting like a Bee".
~The TwoTailedFox posts again....
I don't understand why they're trying to shape it after a dragonfly- There are more efficient ways of getting around the air than flapping wings. I mean, yeah, I get that it would be cool to have one that actually looked like a dragonfly for spying and such, but for getting into dangerous or hard to reach places it shouldn't be designed this way.
I think a really good example is this guy's plane, he made it to be as light as possible and had to make his own motor for it. I think they should make one the size of this 'dragonfly' but with a propeller like the plane in the video.
take a peek at who's around thecorner.. or who's lieing prone on the ceiling... heck, add 2 grams of explosive and use it as a diversion.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
Insectothopter? CIA had these back in the 70s...very hard to control in winds over 5 knots though.
I can't find the word autonomous anywhere in TFA and it's not surprising, considering that it's radio controlled. They "may" make it capable of self guidance in future, but at the moment it's not autonomous.
Nice long word though Roland ! Maybe you meant eponymous ?
Does NO ONE ELSE remember THIS conversation:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/131214
Scroll through it and take in all the posts about how all the eye witnesses were CRAZY to have reported seeing "Dragonfly-Sized Insect Spies". Bathe in the impossibility of the batteries, the cameras, the wireless technology. Soak up how it simply was not even close to being true.
One of a short list of things must be the case:
A) That story from October certainly WAS plausible and a lot of you pundits are going to be dining on fresh hat today.
B) All the know-it-all's are still correct, due to some technicality.
C) I have somehow swapped dimensions again and no one ever said it didn't happen at all...
The DelFly Micro, which looks like a dragonfly, can fly for 3 minutes at a maximum speed of 5 meters/second. It could be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas
How can it do that, if it only flies for 3 minutes?
http://images.google.com/images?q=flyswatter&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wi
I have a simple question and I must so humbly ask forgiveness for my ignorance but...
WHAT THE FUCK DOES OHNOITSROLAND MEAN FER CHRISSAKE
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Maybe it's just me, but I've seen lots of birds try to eat bugs that looked like that. Hope it has at least a couple of Sidewinders on-board, somewhere.
pablo max called it:
"However, what is hard is keeping that little guy with power. I don't think that they have the batteries to power the flight of it, plus the gear to send the pictures back home and not to mention navigation controls. You could maybe manage 5min max for something so small, assuming it was really really light. I dont think 5 min is a useful time though. Who knows, maybe I am wrong though."
I've already built my own micro sized UAV. I used a Walkera 5G6 miniature RC helicopter ($80) and a wireless 2.4ghz ($25) camera with it's own (3x2032 coin cells!) power source. 100 meter range and 7 minute flight time. It's so quiet that at 20 meters away you cannot hear it and you can bareley see it at 50 meters. The inflight video is amazing, somewhat shaky but very watchable. And no, I will not post it. Google youtube for other examples done by other users. The Walkera tips the scales at about 90 grams loaded (3 ounces).
Keep trying! You can go longer! Just think of something else to distract yourself. Pretend you are flying over a dangerous area.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Just because a tech has been demoed in a controlled environment, does not mean it is has been used in a real world scenario. It would be the same as saying "I saw a flying saucer!" and saying I told you so after seeing a test of a hovercraft.
As most have pointed out, the effects of the wind would put this in the unstable category for now. Plus, there is a thing the government has called "video cameras" that can be used from rooftops that provide a much clearer picture.
It looks like it only good inside with all the windows and doors shut or outside with wind speeds 1km/h.
Still, it looks fun to play with.
In that case, I have a large and impressive vehicle collection!
http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&keywords=wowwee%20flytech&search-type=best&tag=coffeeresearch102885-20&index=blended&link_code=qs
The link above shows several Wowee flying toys, yes they have flying fairies too. The dragonfly got me cause it was flying with flapping wings. They do not come with cameras, but they claim to hover and fly for longer times than the one in the article.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Incidentally, micro UAVs similar to the dragon fly, but with micro-turbines, have been in production since at least the 1980s (no links).
And finally :-), we wish to reassure viewers that there is simply no truth in the rumors that fake UFOs have been produced and tested in many countries, and are behind many sightings of strange aerial objects.
Why oil price increase equals economic trouble (Score: Interesti
Radio control micro planes have been built here in the US by hobby people that weigh LESS than 1/2 gram
When our universities are turning out technology like this, I don't find it unreasonable that our shady government isn't testing - or flat out implementing - technology like a dragonfly-sized insect spy on us.
I have an authentic question: why do people here hate Roland Piquepaille? It seems to be a general feeling, but he post some interesting stuff. So, why the hate?
So say we all
The smallest I am aware of is Angry Monk's world record 3.125" span 390 micro gram plane
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=892415
or
Martin Newell's Shark at 2.65" span and 0.495 gram
http://mnewell.rchomepage.com/Planes/Shark/Shark-1.html
Flight time is "A few minutes"
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
I would need a bigger shower and/or smaller wife.
Are here
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
...a fan.
Can you imagine how difficult it would be to control this in windy environment!
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Doesn't sound to me as such a great achievement. Sure, it's a small RC ornitopther, but it will hardly be the first, and as someone pointed out a prop will work better, even at small sizes. There are quite a few examples of planes under 3 grams on the RCGroups indoor forums, in particular these entries: http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=596219 (mg range brushless motors) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=841147 (solar powered < 500 mg project) http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=892415 (390mg Plane - Video)
Does NO ONE ELSE remember THIS conversation:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/131214
No.
That is some serious "observation" you can do in 3 minutes. Hopefully, what you want to observe is within 3 minutes flight time (if you don't care to get it back) or within 1.5 minutes if you DO want it back.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Simple. They (collectively, anyway) hate everybody. This story happens to be a Roland story, so he's the target. Next time, it will be directed towards a racial or ethnic group. After that, it will be people of a particular sexual persuasion, followed shortly thereafter by trolls against Mac users accusing them of all being of that sexual persuasion. Different post, different jackass trying to ruin it for everybody.
Basically, they're haters. They don't need a reason. Chances are, most of these trolls are being posted by a small handful of pimply-faced 14-year-old boys who can't get dates with real girls, so they get their kicks out of porn and abusing people on Internet message boards.
What did I win for giving the correct answer? :-D
That thing makes my Flytech Dragonfly seem like a klunky old relic! I mean not only does it have real pitch control, but a remote camera! Holy crap! On the other hand, having flown a Flytech Dragonfly, I'd hate to see what the slightest draft could do to the Delfly, or try to find it in a field when it goes down.
But I think I have to own one despite the sheer impracticality of it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
...but not legal.
Streaking? Peeping tom? Breaking and entering?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that's a Chinese ripoff of this:
http://www.amazon.com/Sourcing-Network-Sales-4031-DragonFly/dp/B000NI60PS/ref=pd_sbs_t_njs_1
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Thanks, Roland!
So say we all
These guys should work on their understanding of SI prefixes before being allowed to play with the cool stuff !
I'm not a coward by any name.
I haven't bothered clicking links in a roland submission for awhile, so I don't know if it's changed. But historically roland submits every story under the sun, and every link would send to his own write up on his blog, chock full of copy-paste content and lots of ads.
Basically he carpetbombed slashdot with stories to generate a lot of ad revenue.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
BTW, which prop or rotor powered aircraft are you referring to that can fly at mach2? I was not aware that any of these existed.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti