Developer Comment by Randy on April 3, 2011 at 5:00pm

Good pics.  In the first one you can see that trunk that is (or was) spraying water into one of the reactors to cool it down.  Pics from the 20th...so while many of us were thinking, "this crisis is a great time to send in a UAV", somebody did!

 

Looks like that air photo service takes pics with the UAV plane but they also have a radio controlled (presumably FPV) helicopter.

Developer Comment by Randy on April 3, 2011 at 6:49pm

Just reading a little more about them:

    15kg plane with a 2 cycle 86cc engine, 2.2m x 2.8m (roughly 7foot x 9foot)

    travels at 100km/h~220km/h (about 60~130mph)

    flight time of 4~5 hours

    maximum range of 500km (there and back, all together)

they also say they're fully licensed.

Comment by bart ureel on April 4, 2011 at 1:45am

What about the radiation level in the drone after the mission?
I wouldn't be be to keen to take the drone back home after that mission !
Anyway it is a very nice result.

Comment by Felipe Salomão on April 4, 2011 at 2:30am

What is name of plane, do you know how much airframe and where can buy it ?

Thanks

Comment by Hamish on April 4, 2011 at 6:28am

@Felipe, all about the UAV here

 

http://www.diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/can-you-name-this-platform

Comment by Baphomet on April 4, 2011 at 7:14am

And it could be a perfect scenario to use a quadcopter. Sure it is the best way to explore inside the nuclear reactor!. The radiation levels could affect the electronics of a normal quadcopter/uav?

Comment by Sebastian Gralla on April 4, 2011 at 7:31am

radiation doesn't affect electronics (it does in very high levels, but then the reactorbuilding wouldn't be still there ;) )

Comment by Kyle on April 4, 2011 at 8:39am

@ Sebastian: I thought that radiation does affect electronics substantially, now, you do make a valid point about the relative dose, but I would say that the reactor site does qualify, otherwise why would the US & Germany bother sending in special robots? Also see what IEEE says on the subject here and here.  Am I misunderstanding?

T3 Comment by Krzysztof Bosak on April 4, 2011 at 9:37am

I believe the overhead radiation is quite small as we have seen overflight photos from classic manned helo.

The problem is mostly in that soup they made by pouring water onto the nails.

Overhead radiation is most likely severly reducing RC range, and this is why it is not a good scenario for not-fully autonomous quadcopter, on the other hand TRULY RELIABLE navigating in rubble looks beyond what small flying dustbins can do. Last thing they need is extra 3kg of radioactive waste. Not to mention about props putting all dust in the air. I think no, they dont anything copterish there.

Comment by Andrés on April 4, 2011 at 10:01am

@Sebastian: Radiation affects massively electronics. Take for example the robots used in Chernobyl. These could not withstand radiation for long and had to be "substituted" by "volunteers", so called Liquidators. If you watch carefully on some close-up photos of Fukushima and Chernobyl, you'll see that the CCD-sensors/cameras react strongly to radiation (photos are sort of blurry). Takle also for example satelites. The companies that build these, make huge efforts and invest enormous amouts of money to make these radiation robust. I guess, however, that the price of a quadcopter is nothing compared to the costs being generated every minute in Fukushima. So, they would be great as a disposable uav...

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