Another good article from IEEE Spectrum. I'm particularly interested in the disposable glider drone at the bottom, which is basically just a PCB with wings. (Because this comes from the research arm of the Navy, and is of broad technical interest to this community, I am make a sysadmin exemption to our no-military rule. I don't do it often.)
Excerpt:
Here's a wild way to launch UAVs: by using a high-altitude weather balloon with a drone stapled to it, with drones stapled to it. Nope, that's not a typo: The Naval Research Laboratory has been using weather balloons to carry a medium-sized Tempest UAV up to 60,000 feet, and the Tempest UAV itself is carrying a pair of tiny little CICADA (Close-In Covert Autonomous Disposable Aircraft ) drones underneath its wings. Look:
The Tempest can travel up to 30 miles and deploy the CICADAs as gliders, which can then land within 15 feet of their target coordinates. Each CICADA can carry a variety of sensor payloads, and as the name implies, they're designed to be cheap and disposable: The airframe is actually just a custom printed circuit board.
This balloon launch multi-drone thing in particular is very cool, since whatever you attach to the balloon can use its engine purely for range as opposed to altitude. And dropping off these little microdrones to get in and do the dirty work saves a bunch of money and adds that much more versatility to the entire system.
Comments
@Dara
I see you fighting hard for freedom by adding regulations in relatively unregulated country.
Working to make sure no single evil creator will claim property, but the freedom of use should be granted per case so a bureaucrat could claim the freedom of use, as you are against abuse of the individuals flying it without proper permits.
Excellent Dara let them do it all for you, I am sure Chris A won't mind me pointing out that I posted these very flights a couple of weeks ago http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/this-seems-very-diyd I also worried it was a bit military. For me the amazing thing is that its only really the work of http://members.shaw.ca/sonde/ bought upto date. Its all a bit like this http://www.gpsboomerang.com/
sUAS flight is really simple these days. The difference between doing it and doing it elegantly is like night and day.
Unless the country you are in has a policy that allows UAS flight any business model is a bit scuppered for the minute.
http://www.suasnews.com/2012/01/10947/from-the-americas-desk-a-fond...
Sorry Krzys, different story...thats a B29, not the B17s and the P38s that were frozen in 200+ feet of ice.
The real problem with the project pictured is that it has been done at least mostly right, what is hard to accept by somebody that had a different idea in mind but had no time to count a few failures.
Er KB is one of the master experimenters here along with Dean and Crossfire.
Its worth listening, at the minute the UAS wheel seems to be re invented about every six months.
I guess that will be accelerating.
KB please send the banana sharpener.
Five years ago you would have struggled to turn a rudder for less than $500 and holding any sort of altitude would have cost more than $6000.
Dara KB has a platform that flies successfully around the world doing the task it was designed to do. He knows his stuff.
Evil Saddam had no capturable and demonstrable quantities of WMD therefore it was not possible to capture them in quantities. One of the most influential ppl on earth a few nations and their mighty armies didn't know that... and much to world's dismay, it didn't worked.
'Can do' attitude has some extremely dangerous implications, of which wasting people's effort on naive or misalculated endeavours is just a small example. Many things are not worth trying, simply because having an option to make successful working project and unsucessful mostly working project, you should preferably do the former.
"So stop calculating too much and start experimenting."
Experimenting has been done, I have shared the result and asked for hard earned remuneration. Nobody paid, and you are trying to convince people to retry what besides me a lot of ppl in the business already know. This is a clear call for asset wasting and disregarding people with superior experience (what in this subject means simply ANY experience). We know an economy that worked like that, if the reality doesn't adheres to our beliefs about what we can achieve, there is a problem with reality, lets try until it works. It was called socialist economy. Much hated for its inefficiency causing not only damage to people's wealth but ultimately limiting most basic rights, due to dwindling resources.
Real engineers work differently: there is a a small almost workign device, and you look how to change its size, fuel, shape, even principles to adress some possibly very remote problem.
It never works like: 'I really see a cool ativity but I know somebody has banana sharpener (or a parachute). Let's try banana sharpener, will it improve the process'. Then you get a person trying to add banana sharpener to everything that moves, flies, digs. This is how modern western economy works, but this is not how inventions work.
You have mentioned history of Glacier Girl, I mention history of B17 in Greenland. Can do?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFdFo9Yo0LI
Kee Bird recovery. They didn't know it cannot be done like that.
It is shame they tried as somebody else could do it right, without loss of human life.
I forgot to add that the experts said the scanner would not work because of the air in the ice. Ævar and Marteinn did not know that and made the thing and it worked.
Interesting discussion.
Many inventions have been made by men who did not know that the academics had calculated that it could not be done.
An example is the ice-scanner that found The Lost Squadron in the Greenland glacier. It was first made by a self educated inventor (I know him personally) and his electronics engineer buddy. Their design is open source.
The famous comedian and genius Peter Ustinov said: "When the world blows itself up, the last voice heard will be that of an expert saying: 'It can't be done!' "
Someone is also quoted: "Why think, when you can do the experiment?"
So stop calculating too much and start experimenting.
Remember that the definition of a real expert is " One who has made all the mistakes"
@Kryzsztof
You make an excellent point. Most markets I've been able to identify as ripe for "competition on price" are also markets where innovations & profits are insecure under the status quo of intellectual property.
I suppose that leaves Open Source to pave the way on price-competition. This is probably for the best when you consider how much good low cost weapons have done for the world. Arms production doesn't inspire many philanthropists.
Cheers,
Gerry
@Gerry You could argue as well that something so complex that it is completely unique, will give a nation advantage, while searching for low cost solution is also making those designs exposed to copying and intellectual theft, once again favoring cheap labor managers and not the makers. Even if 9 out of 10 gigantic achievements will end in a commercial flop, the sheer amount of amazement across the world will put given nation a durable influx of cheap labor, while volume tech will sponsor cheap labor elsewhere.
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