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A Drone Helicopter That Can Land On a Moving Truck
garymortimer writes with a story (the accompanying video is worth watching) of an unmanned helicopter than can automatically land on a moving surface. Though it's shown landing on a bed of a moving truck, the real purpose is for sea-based use: "This automatic system for take-off, landing and deck-landing of UAVs is the fruit of the joint expertise of Thales and DCNS. Thales is responsible for the positioning system and its interface with the UAV system, the supply of a UAV demonstrator system and slaving of the flight path along a trajectory. DCNS is responsible for predicting the vessel motions, the harpoon system as well as the interface and integration with the vessel."
http://xkcd.com/652/
"We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future."
So I watched that video, what can I say, I liked that trailer.
This video explains about the robot helicopter and what it's really for in the first 22 seconds.
At 1:20 they explain that this helicopter started as a commercial aircraft, but later was adopted for 'special operations'.
As I said, it's a war based economy/
This is again, Boeing. Biggest bombs and robot killer helicopters.
Great economy you are having there. Glad to see you care about your environment and air and all that 'welfare'. Too bad the outcome of all this wonderful 'care' is a war economy. But ask yourselves this: once they have enough robots to kill people all around the world, why do they need you at all? You don't produce anything else and all the weapons they need they will have automated. I guess your purpose is to burn oil and their's is to make sure they get more power and weapons so you can burn more oil.
You can't handle the truth.
We at Higheye b.v. did the exact same thing with DCNS years ago..
at sea...
on a moving barge...
and our HE80 VTOL UAV.
The test was largely successful even under rougher than expected sea, yes this was in international water by the coast of France.
If you are looking for the website we are dutch.
EJ Goeree
Former Chief Engineer
Higheye b.v.
Impressive but still by far not as good as an experienced human pilot.
Humans have annoying requirements like food, water, and sleep. You can't build experienced human pilots in a factory. Machines are easiler to replace and don't mind if you send them on suicide missions.
I wonder how well this the system deals with a ships movement at sea. I don't know how much an aircraft carrier pitches and rolls. But having looked at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPqXlqam2Z8 a Supertanker in a storm. The hugest biggest boats get smashed about at sea. Not saying you'd fly in weather like that. I'm just wondering at what point the system can't cope as they can't simulate that movement with a truck.
Now show this with the truck moving vertically 6-10 feet every few seconds, with 15-30 knot winds that change 10-30 degrees every minute, and hundreds/thousands of pounds of sea spray hitting the side of the helo. Was in a bird that landed in these conditions. Another time, we aborted in worse conditions and had to find a bigger deck.
You also forget experience, those minor incremental improvements. In humans a trainer passes only a very small percentage of that knowledge to a trainee, but with machines, it's as simple as "version += 1"
And unlike humans, while you may have a few pilots, maybe hundreds in a very large airforce, getting there takes a lot of time. Replacing even one of those people is expensive and time consuming compared to installing some software.
Ships, planes, cars, tanks were initially built for their user, the human part. If you removed it from the start, sound barrier would have been broken earlier, space age would have started sooner, and so on.
Look at space probes, you don't need people inside, the software can do what humans did, but better and constantly. You don't need to add room for the crew, supplies or additional systems, or more importantly research new technologies.
In terms of mechanized weapons, what's the next step? A jet that constantly moves and attacks at mach 3? Oh wait, we have those, they're called missiles, maybe they could shrink them a lot and you get smart bullets? Given the level of miniaturization technology has reached for quite some time, I really wouldn't be surprised if they already exist but simply aren't public knowledge ...
Still, human labour is cheap and getting cheaper my the minute.
So we can have robot apaches running the apache web server which hosts the remote maintenance portal?
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Noise is strongly dependent on the flight condition of the helicopter and the orientation of the helicopter with respect to the observers; there's no simple answer for noise levels at some fixed distance, unfortunately. UAV are generally quieter because they're smaller and lighter and because the smaller rotor needs to operate at a higher RPM and hence higher blade passing frequency; this drives the frequencies of noise up where they are more readily absorbed by the atmosphere (albeit, they are also more annoying!)
As for your helicopter encounter, if you were in a rural area with farmland, it was quiet likely an agricultural helicopter. Helicopters are commonly used for spraying, since they're maneuverably enough to get into small fields and the rotor wash helps disperse the chemicals better than fixed wing dusters. I'm not sure they do it in Ohio, but helicopters are also sometimes used in citrus growing areas around the time when the first frosts start to set in. The helicopter operators will contract out with farmers to set up temperature monitoring stations on the ground; when it approaches freezing the stations light up a beacon. The pilots will fly out at night, when there;'s usually a temperature inversion and hover over the lit beacons, using the rotor as a large fan to draw warmer air from higher up down into the orchard until the ground temperature raises and the beacon shuts off. Surprisingly, it's quite effective although I've heard it's becoming less common in recent years due to changes in weather and rising fuel costs. Could it have been some UAV helicopter? Not impossible, but not likely--operation is highly restrict for civil applications, especially at night. The military has plenty of places to fly these things on government property where a crash won't put civilians at risk. I've been involved in some research flight tests of manned helicopter on private property, but we'd never fly at night and Ohio doesn't have the best weather for flight testing anyway.