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Micro Plane That Perches On Power Lines

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the look-up-in-the-air dept.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us about a microplane that perches on power lines to recharge its batteries being developed as a surveillance device at MIT. As you can imagine, landing on a power line is hard to do ... and charging off transmission lines has its own problems.

33 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Perch? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Would it be easier if it were more bat-like, hanging from the line instead of perching?

    1. Re:Perch? by swanzilla · · Score: 2, Informative
      The 'perch' is actually quite bat-like. FTA:

      The MIT engineers' answer is to send their 30-centimetre-wide micro air vehicle (MAV) into a controlled stall, pointing its nose up at just the right point in its trajectory to collide with and hook onto the cable.

      Once it hooks the cable, it is a passive system. Check the video...it hasn't been /.ed (yet.)

      --
      0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
    2. Re:Perch? by nedlohs · · Score: 2, Informative

      It does hang, just from a hook near the nose so it isn't upside down.

      Which would make actually hooking up *much* easier, since you need to be nose up which is why you can stall.

      Hooking up upside down would be really hard, pointing your nose down makes slowing down just a tad difficult.

      What I don't understand is how it is going to take off again. It'd need to unhook and flip nose down before it hit the ground with enough height left to get the speed to generate lift. That doesn't seem like such an easy thing to do...

    3. Re:Perch? by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Hooking up nose down may be easier, come to think of it. Because then what you should do is basically land on top of the wire with a small forward speed, letting your aircraft slide forward until the hook mounted all the way at the tail catches the wire. Presto, hanging nose down.

      Getting off would be simple as well that way: retract the hook, fall down making speed, and just pull up the nose. Now just make sure you hang on a high enough wire.

      Taking off hanging nose up is a bit harder, I would guess a tail flip - also a quite standard manoeuvre but requires more height. Unless your engine is so powerful that you can accelerate straight up. Not likely for such a craft.

    4. Re:Perch? by causality · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The 'perch' is actually quite bat-like. FTA:

      The MIT engineers' answer is to send their 30-centimetre-wide micro air vehicle (MAV) into a controlled stall, pointing its nose up at just the right point in its trajectory to collide with and hook onto the cable.

      Once it hooks the cable, it is a passive system. Check the video...it hasn't been /.ed (yet.)

      This is all very interesting but ... do we really need another way to spy on people? One would wonder how the hell our ancestors managed to survive without living in a surveillance society.

      <hypothetical>It's getting to the point that there may be a market for portable personal EMP devices when battery or supercapacitor technology advances enough. Just fire an EMP burst every so often and take out any such devices that may be near you, assuring your privacy that shouldn't have been threatened in the first place. If that harms cell phones or the computers controlling car engines and such, just do what the government does and call it "collateral damage" in the "war for privacy". You'd be putting it in terms that they understand.</hypothetical>

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    5. Re:Perch? by nospam007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "One would wonder how the hell our ancestors managed to survive without living in a surveillance society. "

      They believed that some old man in the sky was watching them all the time.

    6. Re:Perch? by Xibby · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm over thinking it. Here's a R/C plane going from VTOL to normal flight and back to VTOL.

      http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1322

      --
      I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
    7. Re:Perch? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” -Seneca.

    8. Re:Perch? by TheCarp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yes but this is only a prototype. The technology has a lot of potential, and the question then becomes... if one application is small and its ok to steal tiny amounts of power that are unnoticeable over line loss, where do you draw the line? Should it just be free for all and we decide later if its a problem? What will we do when someone develops a "floating fortress" that deploys hundreds of these and tethers them to run from and recharge itself?

      Would it be acceptable to setup a fleet of these glide up, charge some batteries, then come back and get new ones and supply a constant battery power? If thats acceptable too, becuase its so small, how do you tell the next guy he can't do the same, and the next?

      -Steve

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    9. Re:Perch? by westlake · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is all very interesting but ... do we really need another way to spy on people? One would wonder how the hell our ancestors managed to survive without living in a surveillance society.

      Your ancestors never knew what it was like to live outside a surveillance society.

      They might be Irish and Catholic, Russian and Jewish, Baptist and Negro - but the densely packed urban neighborhoods they inhabited were small towns writ large.

      The small town knows you by sight from the day you are born. It can recite every breath of scandal that has touched your family for the last five generations.

      There is one school, one church, one doctor, a general store, a post office....

      a saloon, and a gin mill....

      The saloon crowd more or less respectable and well-behaved. The gin mill - the road house just out of town - known to one and all for its drunkenness and danger.

       

    10. Re:Perch? by cgenman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is definitely the biggest problem. But you make it sound like A.I.: something that has been worked on and has remained elusive for a half-century. Realistically speaking, precision close-range acrobatic RC flight has been worked on at MIT for about 7 years. A lot of that has been in groundwork that, unlike AI, actually seems to work.

      Wind is a major problem. But it seems premature to say that the project "wont work" because of it. Maybe it needs an internal accelerometer to judge wind offset. Maybe it needs to drop some chaff and do some velocity calculations. Maybe we need to increase the amount of control systems over a regular aircraft to give the computer the tools to deal with wind. Or maybe it just keeps moving until it finds a spot without a lot of wind. Wind doesn't seem like the death of the project.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
    11. Re:Perch? by radtea · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That's a rather juvenile way to put it as I don't know any serious Christian who honestly believes the transcendental God of the Bible is a corporeal being who levitates in Earth's atmosphere.... but okay. They believed "that some old man in the sky was watching them all the time." They did not believe that some old man in the sky was coming up with clever ways for them to watch their neighbors all the time.

      There's a lot wrong with your claims. I guess you don't know very much about Christianity, either in contemporary practise or historically.

      The Reverend Jerry Fallwell once described the establishment of the Kingdom of God after Armageddon as "moving his headquarters from planet Heaven to planet Earth." The literal role of the sky in various Protest Fundamentalist theologies is very important, as suggested by the terminology they use to describe then end of days.

      So saying the GP's description is juvenile is incorrect: it is a fair reflection of extremely common beliefs amongst apparently sincere and serious mainstream Christian groups that are active in the United States today.

      With regard to your second claim, I believe you ought to learn a little about the role of confession in Catholicism, particularly up to the time of the Reformation. There are perfectly sound sociological analyses of the institution that strongly suggest it was nothing but a means of social control via constant surveillance, by self and others.

      So please, before you post about Christianity inform yourself as to what actual living Christians believe and have believed. That way you won't embarrass yourself quite so much with your ignorance of this widely held an diverse faith.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  2. Sweet! by WreathOfBarbs · · Score: 2, Funny

    I for one welcome our new power line perching overlords!

  3. Re:prior art? by radicalpi · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is it just me, or is that Pigeon staring at us?

  4. Charging by davidwr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "charging off transmission lines has its own problems."

    Not to mention how to bill for it.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
    1. Re:Charging by rah1420 · · Score: 5, Funny

      This brings back memories of when I was a kid. I and my friend had a 'fort' which was coincidentally under one of those "high tension" (what, about 50KV?) power lines.

      We had the bright idea that rather than run an extension cord out from his house, we could just shoot an arrow that had a conductor attached to it over the lowest of those power lines, then use a transformer to step it down to the right voltage, and Bob's your uncle; instant television in the old fort.

      Fortunately, we were much more interested in the architecture than the elctrical provisioning of said fort and quickly realized how in over our heads we'd be to try something like that.

      --
      Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
    2. Re:Charging by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Something like this?
      Man steals electricity with meat hook

      (Reuters) - German police are investigating a man for theft after he siphoned electricity off a high-voltage overhead transmission line for one month with the help of an ordinary meat hook, authorities said on Tuesday.

    3. Re:Charging by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Better hope its a low charge. The power company can see unbilled usage at the plant, and are able to sense demand on the lines. I know of two cases here in Colorado where people were getting free power because of where the lines were adapted. One got fined, the other didnt, which is probably because of how he had it set up. The first actually set up a fairly fancy induction relay to power his house (and was fined for "stealing" power that was leaking out of the lines anyways), where the other just put florescent lights in his barn that lit up because of the field.

      When asked to take his lights down, he said no, and that they could move their lines if they didnt want him to use it. They did route it over his barn (a pre-existing structure).

    4. Re:Charging by rubycodez · · Score: 4, Informative

      news for you, placing inductor with coil near line doesn't "steal power that was leaking out of the lines anyway", it acts as secondary of transformer that in fact removes energy from line, stealing power that would have gone to customers.

    5. Re:Charging by minorproblem · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Also if it flies between the lines its wingspan could potentially cause a flashover..

  5. As someone on Facebook mentioned... by magsol · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Pooping on cars is the next hurdle."

    --
    "I'd just like to emphasise that taking a million years isn't a metaphor here..." -Rich Bradshaw
    1. Re:As someone on Facebook mentioned... by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Laserbeak, eject. Operation: wiretapping.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
    2. Re:As someone on Facebook mentioned... by cgenman · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All of the powerline powering systems I've seen breach the outer shell of the line with a metal hook.

      There is no way in hell that's getting approved for domestic usage. A: it would be sued out of existence amazingly quickly, and B: there are enough government-owned places around domestically that you could just plug the things in.

      Further, you'd have to either have someone watch all of that video (and we're tremendously backed up on audio recordings as-is), or process it somehow in a searchable format. Something like this would make sense to replace human tails in certain circumstances, and could be helpful in backing up helicopters in pursuit cases. But overall, there aren't enough police for a full police state. We just have way too much data as-is.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  6. Re:prior art? by jbeaupre · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They should just combine the pigeon and the roboroach. http://www.wireheading.com/roboroach/index.html

    --
    The world is made by those who show up for the job.
  7. Re:prior art? by Captain+Spam · · Score: 5, Funny

    So MIT is spending how much money on reinventing the pigeon??

    I'm picturing a few pigeons on the line when this microplane perches on it. The pigeons look over at this mechanical oddity with reserved curiosity. Then an artificially-generated voice from the plane states "PAY NO ATTENTION TO ME. I AM A NORMAL PIGEON. I DEFECATE ON CARS AND THE HEADS OF PEOPLE. COO. COO". The pigeons, satisfied with the answer, go about their business.

    After they fly off, the plane's voice kicks back in. "HEH HEH HEH. SUCKERS".

    --
    Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
  8. parasites by danlip · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I am imagining self-reproducing bird sized electricity suckers overwhelming the grid. It would make a great premise for a sci-fi movie.

  9. where is the outrage? by frovingslosh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So, making a copy of a song is piracy and stealing, but taking energy from a power line is clever and innovative? Seems like very selective morality for what Slashdot condemns and what they find worthy of reporting without criticism.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  10. Who pays for the electricity? by junglebeast · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Great, robotic birds land on the power lines and run up your electric bill.

    1. Re:Who pays for the electricity? by HTH+NE1 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Generally there are not exposed power lines between your power meter and your home, and even less likely with newer construction. They could trace it to your neighborhood, but not to any one particular home unless they caught it perching.

      There are also people working on leeching power from WiFi radio signals in order to recharge cell phones, with the consequence of reducing the range of your WiFi.

      I'm looking forward to someone coming up with the not-so-bright idea of recharging electric cars using the induction loops that control the lights at intersections. Like pulling power for your time machine by parking on a rift in Cardiff.

      --
      Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
  11. The stuff that's actually interesting by Zackbass · · Score: 5, Informative

    If anyone here is actually interested in the science behind this you should have a look at some of the lab's publications on the subject. As per Slashdot tradition, all the brilliant points brought up so far in the comments already have answers, they're just a little bit harder to find this time.

    Our research group's website:
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/index.html

    On the actual perching work:
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Cory08.pdf
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Hoburg09a.pdf
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Moore09.pdf
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Roberts09.pdf

    Rick's PhD thesis on the subject:
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/locomotion/perching_media/CoryThesis.pdf

    and on the controls side:
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/robotics-center/public_papers/Tedrake09a.pdf

    --
    You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
  12. A little side note to the geniuses at MIT by bplipschitz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Miniature surveillance aircraft would never need to return to base if they could cling to overhead power lines to recharge their batteries. Now engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are close to perfecting the trick – taking inspiration from birds.

    Uh, the birds aren't recharging.

    Really.

    1. Re:A little side note to the geniuses at MIT by ap7 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Usually, sitting high up there, they are discharging!

  13. Charging through induction by __roo · · Score: 2, Informative

    It shouldn't be too hard to charge a small battery through induction. We already saw an example of this when Richard Box used induction for his fluorescent light art, and it's not an uncommon subject for questions on underaduate E&M exams.

    --
    Building Better Software