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
Innovation & application are a chicken & egg problem.
Sometimes a solution looking for a problem succeeds in finding one. There are people interested in the mass dispersal of low cost sensors which previously did not think the means existed to accomplish this. They may not need 30m accuracy if the dispersal pattern meets a certain threshold.
Similarly, there are people who had ideas for communications with those same low cost sensors who did not believe either the payload or the delivery vehicle existed.
The obvious dystopian application is to put an electrolet microphone, infrared LED, & button cell onboard. Even if half the "bugs" get swept up by street sweepers, those that are missed would provide the eye in the sky an ear on the ground.
The next logical step is to use that same eye in the sky to help guide the device on target using cheap RF comms to walk the vehicle on target. A pressure sensor for altitude isn't going to increase the BoM by much.
Suddenly a device which may not have many practical application in and of itself inspires other improvements which create a solution previously thought impossible because pieces of the puzzle were missing.
I believe there are many technologies which would greatly expand their utility based on lowered price point alone, even if the reliability or performance cost is high.
You haven't paid yet.
@Dara I enourage sensible ideas and discourage time-wasters based on lack of analysis.
You want cheap, powerless glide? You need gliding parachute or will land everywhere but on target. You want to compete with this flying PCB? You need similar weight and size with similar price. Good luck making gliding parachute 10inch wide, less expensive than the design proposed, that is likely to unfold after being stored like a furball for who knows how long. Please remember such design has to be strictly symmetric after every opening in order to make PID autopilot navigation possible, or the autopilot design costs will explode.
Now please transfer 5000USD on my account for accurate analysis sparing you 5 months of failed trials (90% price reduction included).
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@Dara
Experience and consultation with fellow PhD in avionics. Articles in today science contain only success stories, waste of time to look for one.
But you can ask Bill Gates or LAN for confirmation.
@Dara except at this size it will deploy unreliably 50% of the time.
There is a thin line between engineers building disposable and useless solutions.
The real problem is that if it is disposable, then somebody 'doesn't cares' about sensor quality, which are already way more costly than the glider and a bag of UAVs portrayed.
Now what could be done with cheap sensors, cheap or no modem etc that couldn't be delivered using ground vehicle, that have limited range and low quality data feedback? Basically only kaboom applications come to mind. It's cool they are having fun with promising military research without hurting themselves.
Vehicle cost/km traveled it's hard to compete with a balloon launched sailplane.
Disposable UAV is music to 3DRobotic's ears.
It's my understanding that this sort of thing isn't permissible without a Certificate of Authorization from the FAA (and good luck getting one). That's unfortunate as this sort of thing is interesting and very doable on an amateur budget.
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