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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.
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 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.
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...
In an issue of Meat & Poultry magazine, editors quoted from "Feathers," the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation, telling the following story:
The US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.
The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass impact, it'll survive a real collision with a bird during flight.
It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they're developing.
They borrowed FAA's chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired.
The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, broke the engineer's chair and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine's cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.
The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:
"Use a thawed chicken."
I hate printers.
"Roland" is the submission whore that "blogs" (copies) stuff from all over, links to it, adds a simplistic comment then somehow gets that submitted to Slashdot.
He does it for ad revenue. Quite effective at it, and quite annoying for those great unwashed that don't suck Slashdot dick to get stories submitted.
Hm...I don't think they'll survive easily if they get sucked into a jet engine. They're kind of small and don't look that durable.
I would say 500 meters straight up and over the edge of that cliff you're standing at the bottom of would definitely fall under 'difficult-to-reach'. And quite possibly be extremely useful to have one person there checking that out before you bring in say that helicopter...
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.