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Ultra-Light Micro Air Vehicles
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Jul 24, 2008 06:57 AM
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
from the eye-in-the-sky dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "Dutch engineers have built the third generation of the DelFly autonomous air vehicle. The DelFly Micro made its first public flight earlier today in Delft. This micro air vehicle weighs only 3 grams and has a wingspan of 10 centimeters. This very small remote-controlled aircraft carries a 0.4 gram camera. The DelFly Micro, which looks like a dragonfly, can fly for 3 minutes at a maximum speed of 5 meters/second. It could be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas."
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Paging Danny Dunn... (Score:3, Interesting)
Danny Dunn [wikipedia.org] to the white courtesy phone, please ...
Re:Paging Danny Dunn... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's exactly what I was thinking! When I was 12, and I read Raymond Abrashkin's "Danny Dunn: Invisible Boy", I was mesmerized. And this mini UAV is essentially the plot device in the book, right down to the dragonfly appearance. Pretty good prediction for a book from the mid '70s.
Parent
Video link: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Video link: (Score:5, Informative)
There is an assortment of additional video links on this page
http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=1468ded9-96cb-47dd-aed3-da0a70a34813&lang=en [tudelft.nl]
Its like they are catering for everyone, because each link has a different format.
Parent
Practicality? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
the offical site is http://www.delfly.nl/ [delfly.nl]
Re:Video link: (Score:5, Funny)
OK, they win. I was going to moan about the refresh on the camera being inadequate, the flight time being useless, and the inability to hover meaning that it has two modes: flying, and crashing.
But having seen in action? Must... own... tiny... whirring... affront to God. Must.
Parent
Re:Video link: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Video link: (Score:4, Funny)
You may also want to check if the reflective surface of bathroom tiles mess with its navigation or imaging in any way.
Parent
I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:5, Funny)
You'd still notice this in the girl's shower.
Re:I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:5, Funny)
I know this sounds incredible, but it's actually possible to be in a shower with a girl in person without the aid of technology.
If you're just naturally invisible? If you're both plumbers? C'mon, tell us how! Slashdot wants to know.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
If you're both dirty?
Re:I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:5, Funny)
I know this sounds incredible, but it's actually possible to be in a shower with a girl in person without the aid of technology.
You must be new here.
Parent
Re:I'll wait for the Fourth Generation (Score:4, Funny)
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
As scientist we have to trust the experiment to test the theory, and having just performed the experiment, I can tell you, you are wrong!
One for the Christmas List (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They're 50% longer and wider (so not much bigger), but they are 5 times heavier - 15g.
They look like this:
http://www.airsport.com.hk/ShowProduct.asp?id=380
(I didn't buy it from there though - it's just a link I got from google).
Trouble is the quality control is not very good, so either you get it at a shop where you can test it first, or you'd have to risk getting a dud. And even if it seems to work, there's no guarantee it'll continue to wor
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's also this new one [thinkgeek.com], which is basically the same size as the DelFly Micro, can hover, and has double the flight time. It doesn't have a camera, though, but considering TFA claims the Micro's camera only weighs 0.5 grams it would be easy to add one.
3 minutes? (Score:4, Insightful)
3 minutes is not very useful. By the time you reach your destination and actually get some good images, you've run out of time to return and have effectively lost your MAV. If they are meant to be throw-away, this is not a design flaw.
From my experience as an RC pilot, the smaller the craft, the more difficult it is to control. I would be curious to see how they've overcome the twitchiness of a such light weight.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
3 minutes is not very useful. By the time you reach your destination and actually get some good images, you've run out of time to return and have effectively lost your ...
Ahem. That's what she said.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
3 minutes is not very useful. By the time you reach your destination and actually get some good images,
Some slashdotters may be quicker on the trigger than you.
What happens... (Score:2)
Re:What happens... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:What happens... (Score:5, Funny)
In an issue of Meat & Poultry magazine, editors quoted from "Feathers," the publication of the California Poultry Industry Federation, telling the following story:
The US Federal Aviation Administration has a unique device for testing the strength of windshields on airplanes. The device is a gun that launches a dead chicken at a plane's windshield at approximately the speed the plane flies.
The theory is that if the windshield doesn't crack from the carcass impact, it'll survive a real collision with a bird during flight.
It seems the British were very interested in this and wanted to test a windshield on a brand new, speedy locomotive they're developing.
They borrowed FAA's chicken launcher, loaded the chicken and fired.
The ballistic chicken shattered the windshield, broke the engineer's chair and embedded itself in the back wall of the engine's cab. The British were stunned and asked the FAA to recheck the test to see if everything was done correctly.
The FAA reviewed the test thoroughly and had one recommendation:
"Use a thawed chicken."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This old chestnut has been around for years. The way I first heard it (at least 15 years ago) was that the Chicken Gun was Canadian and the FAA had to have the concept of a thawed fowl gently explained to them.
I have no doubt every country has a different idiot/victim, depending on who your most popular "moron nation" happens to be at the moment.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Part-23 aircraft (little airplanes) have to withstand a 2-lb bird hitting the windscreen at max flap speed. Part-25 aircraft (airliners) have to withstand an 8-lb bird hitting the empennage at cruse speed and a 4-lb bird hitting anywhere else including the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why a dragonfly? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think a really good example is this guy's plane [youtube.com], he made it to be as light as possible and had to make his own motor for it. I think they should make one the size of this 'dragonfly' but with a propeller like the plane in the video.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why they're trying to shape it after a dragonfly- There are more efficient ways of getting around the air than flapping wings. I mean, yeah, I get that it would be cool to have one that actually looked like a dragonfly for spying and such, but for getting into dangerous or hard to reach places it shouldn't be designed this way.
Yeah, the millions of species of insect and bird have got a lot to learn from us land lubbers. I mean, hovering in one position is a piece of cake for our mechanical devices, so much so that we can get a flight to anywhere we want and we don't need a runway. Oh, wait, we can't unless we use a helicopter, which is slow in the horizontal plane and noisy and fuel hungry.
Living things manipulate the air in much more elegant and finely controlled ways than anything man has produced. We mainly just force our wa
Re: (Score:2)
A dragonfly (both real ones and this one - did you watch the videos?) is a lot move maneuverable (can change direction on a dime) than a plane, and also for covert applications not going to draw attention since it really does look like a dragonfly and the only noise is the flapping wings.
I'm not even sure that the aerodynamics of plane would scale to this small, but this thing demonstrably does, and real-life dragonflys prove that this design does indeed work at smaller scales such as the 5cm they are targe
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why they're trying to shape it after a dragonfly- There are more efficient ways of getting around the air than flapping wings.
Flapping wings can be more efficient at low Reynolds number [amazon.com] configurations, like small insects or micro UAVs.
Evolution, of course, already worked out the Reynolds number configurations for soaring, near-fixed wing flight (large birds of prey) versus mostly flapping flight (flies).
Re: (Score:2)
Heh,
I remember reading that book as a kid! MAN I wanted one of those SO BADLY. And now I can finally get one! Although I think I'll skip the "setting fires with small dragonfly probe and destroying the probe in the process" part.
great for urban warfare (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Insectothopter? (Score:4, Interesting)
autonomous ? (Score:2)
Nice long word though Roland ! Maybe you meant eponymous ?
Impossible! Slashdot SAID SO!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Does NO ONE ELSE remember THIS conversation:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/131214 [slashdot.org]
Scroll through it and take in all the posts about how all the eye witnesses were CRAZY to have reported seeing "Dragonfly-Sized Insect Spies". Bathe in the impossibility of the batteries, the cameras, the wireless technology. Soak up how it simply was not even close to being true.
One of a short list of things must be the case:
A) That story from October certainly WAS plausible and a lot of you pundits are going to be dining on fresh hat today.
B) All the know-it-all's are still correct, due to some technicality.
C) I have somehow swapped dimensions again and no one ever said it didn't happen at all...
A Mathman Prophecy (Score:2, Insightful)
The DelFly Micro, which looks like a dragonfly, can fly for 3 minutes at a maximum speed of 5 meters/second. It could be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas
How can it do that, if it only flies for 3 minutes?
Re: (Score:2)
5 meters per second, 300 seconds. 1500 meters (just under a mile). I can think of a lot of times a group of soldiers might want to know what was going on within a mile of their location, say, over near that machinegun nest....
Re: (Score:2)
I can think of a lot of times a group of soldiers might want to know what was going on within a mile of their location, say, over near that machinegun nest....
(One 500lb bomb later)
WHAT machine-gun nest?
Re:A Mathman Prophecy (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say 500 meters straight up and over the edge of that cliff you're standing at the bottom of would definitely fall under 'difficult-to-reach'. And quite possibly be extremely useful to have one person there checking that out before you bring in say that helicopter...
Parent
Hello Gentle Denizens of Slashdot (Score:2)
WHAT THE FUCK DOES OHNOITSROLAND MEAN FER CHRISSAKE
Re:Hello Gentle Denizens of Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
"Roland" is the submission whore that "blogs" (copies) stuff from all over, links to it, adds a simplistic comment then somehow gets that submitted to Slashdot.
He does it for ad revenue. Quite effective at it, and quite annoying for those great unwashed that don't suck Slashdot dick to get stories submitted.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I must excuse my outburst, someone took the Vodka bottle from my bottom drawer so I had to get by with seven coffees this morning.
Perhaps I'll ask the janitor sleeping under my desk if he knows where the bottle went.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll correct that for you:
"Float like a floatbot, sting like an automatic stinging machine!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
See cuz it's small.
Small right? Like a...
Bug...
Annnnnd...
<spontaneously implodes>