Those of us in the North Country, are very familiar with the shape and mess that we have to clean up every year. Yes the venerable maple seed. Lockheed has found a way to turn this into a military drone. Way to go, Lockheed!
This design seems familiar, very much like Jack Crossfire's Marcy mono-wing.
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No Jack don't turn to the Dark Side. ;-)
Jack, just go work for them please! We can back you up for the interview and will provide reference! :)
come on! tons of funding to play work with your Marcy! (maybe they will rebrand it... they tend to do that)
One problem with these that I can see is the stress put on the controller board and camera, from the centrifugal force. This may be a case where large is better too. Larger wing would be slower rpm, and less centrifugal force.
Jack is well ahead of the curve on this one. Bio inspired projects will probably be the future of UAS, less power and push more thought and elegance.
This is from their "LM Tomorrow" iPad app. We discussed it here last month.
Why, because I believe this type of craft can get quadcopter/helicopter type flight with close to airplane efficiency. But I have not seen any comments on this aspect of the design. And you can 'point' the camera to any compass direction instantly, maybe even get 360 view all the time with enough bandwidth, that would help in tense tactical situations!
I say good job Lockheed! You're catching up to what Jack Crossfire's been doing for years! I wonder what kind of budget these two groups had... my guess is Jack's efforts have cost a little bit less.
How long before Lockheed puts out a long exposure video/photo of their Samarai writing text across the sky?
But hey, they get to do things that "haven't been done before"....
Did anyone else get the feeling they were as smug as they could be with this video or am I reading too much into it?
I still don't really understand the reason behind developing it other than "just to see if we could", but the technology is pretty amazing, I'll give them that.
In the original video, I wonder if that music is Mord Fustang like in the Trappy videos?
Another video revealed they got the video working, but no evidence of an autopilot & the thing looks like a bunch of arduinos duct taped on a lazy susan. The job opening required 20 years experience & a masters degree in ardu monocopter development. Got to fill out those TPS reports.
They mention using this for things like hostage situations, etc. Is this really a more efficient or better vehicle than something like a quadrotor for these applications? These things look a bit awkward in the air and certainly appear to be more distracting to a critical situation than other vehicles. Either way, mono-wings are pretty impressive if you ask me!