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Robotics Technology

The Wasp Micro Air Vehicle 222

Posted by samzenpus from the small-pilots dept.
Victor Cheng writes "In developments that bring together a variety of technologies including robotics and digital imaging the Wasp Micro Air Vehicle is one of the Pentagon's latest tools currently in testing of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group (although I'm thinking its not going to need a carrier to get this one up and flying). The 13 inch Wasp comes equipped with 2 video cameras, GPS and has a myriad of possible applications. Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."
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The Wasp Micro Air Vehicle More

The Wasp Micro Air Vehicle

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  • Swat it? (Score:5, Funny)

    by FirienFirien ( 857374 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:03AM (#12163817) Homepage
    Swatting a 13-inch wasp is unlikely. Scream and run away, or possibly even cower and say "I for one welcome our giant robot wasp overlords"...

    • Re:Swat it? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FirienFirien ( 857374 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:08AM (#12163830) Homepage
      More seriously, I'm surprised by the size of it. It seems like an RC light powered plane with inbuilt gizmos in the wings - I had seriously expected the Pentagon to be a huge amount smaller than this, with a vague thought of hover. I guess without the wireless power (see the /. story, NASA prizes) available yet these things have to carry their own fuel, and then the structure needs to be larger and more supportive, enough physical strength to support power loading, and space for the gizmos. But... 13 inches. And since I don't have a concievable way of saying it without innuendo... that's BIG.

      • Re:Swat it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MyLongNickName ( 822545 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:16AM (#12164174) Journal
        I don't think it is THAT big. It will be very useful for keeping an eye on a small area (say a block in Falluja) without being obvious. No, it is not designed to fly five foot over Osama without it being noticed. But this doesn't make it useless.

      • Re:Swat it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:51AM (#12164339) Homepage Journal
        Suppose they had an autonomous surveillance vehicle that was literally the size of a housefly. Do you think they'd tell us?

        Not that I think such a thing could be built right now, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't on somebody's drawing board. American needs intelligence and loves technical fixes. If there's a technical solution to an intelligence problem, somebody's bound to be workig on it. Remember how US Navy subs tapped Soviet undersea communication cables right in their harbors?

        I actually surprised they acknowledge that something this size exists. It's small enough that it is probably hard to distinguish from a sea bird.
        • Insect-sized surveillance vehicles have been in the works for some time. I saw a pitch at the Pentagon for something similar to this in 1996 or '97. The point of a very small autonomous surveillance platform is that it can be used in tactical situations. It's not for looking at North Korean missile facilities, it's for checking out the inside of that building your platoon is about to assault.

          The obvious early adopters of a tool like this would be Delta Force, because so much of their work involves forced

      • I had seriously expected the Pentagon to be a huge amount smaller than this, with a vague thought of hover.

        I've always thought of the Pentagon as a building, you know... one of those huge things you can actually enter. Thirteen inches seem a bit small for that.
        The concept of a hovering Pentagon is cool, however. Nukes are so Cold War, in 2005 it has to be a flying office building.
      • If you fly RC planes then you will realize that even a 13in plane is pretty small. That is, if you want to actually be able to control it.

        The smaller the plane, the harder it is to control. They already have planes way smaller than that and also helicopters but good luck using them outside because even a slight breeze will make them damn near impossible to control.

        The only solution to the problem I can see is if we embed a microcontroller or something that can quickly compensate for the wind like insect

      • Re:Swat it? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by SparkyTWP ( 556246 )
        I worked for a company called Aerovironment over the summer that did a lot of research in this area (They won several DARPA contracts relating to these), and from I've seen, it is very difficult to make these smaller. Now, I am an electrical engineer and not an aero, so I can't really give details of the aero stuff, but you can get the idea...

        An amazing amount of electronics has to fit in a very tiny area. Things like cameras, GPS, flight control, servos, batteries, etc... all add up. The batteries are pro
      • The trouble with making these things much smaller is that they literally blow away - in any kind of wind, a very small UAV becomes impossible to control. I seem to recall a toy version of a micro UAV (so far I can't find it on Google) that was restricted to indoor use for this very reason.

        Sean
    • I guess you didn't play Simpsons Hit & Run then -- when confronted with an oversized wasp equipped with a camera, the solution is to jump in the air and kick it!

      (Strangely apropos in light of the "I for one..." comment...)
    • Guess you've never been to Texas :)

      On another note, this kind of reminds me of the movie "Toys" with Robin Williams.

  • Yesterday's News (Score:5, Informative)

    by amigoro ( 761348 ) * on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:03AM (#12163819) Homepage Journal
    The story is more than 2 years old [mithuro.com].

    Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that's stale.

  • A neat little toy... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HaloZero ( 610207 ) <protodekaNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:04AM (#12163822) Homepage
    Question is, how close do you have to be to use it? I mean, it's got a whole bunch of applications, though it doesn't look very stealthy, other than it's size. The article(s) say that it's intended for use with ship-to-ship boardings, but nothing mentions it's actual operational range. I mean, if the thing isn't good for atleast 1500 feet (plus having enough power to make it through steel bulkheads if it has to go anyplace but topside), you might as well not use it. Also wonder how long the battery life is on that little gadget. I'm sure the US Navy thinks of them as disposable, so recharability isn't exactly priority, but with an electrical system sucking on power for both flight operations, two cameras, and an RF stream, it's got to have a nice big pair on it.

    Next question, where can I get one and how much?

    • Re:A neat little toy... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johnjay ( 230559 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:30AM (#12165178)
      I could see an application for this in use against smugglers... Fly two wasps out in front of the coast guard cutter to put the suspect ship in the center of a triangle of viewpoints. Open water, no flying inside the other ship. In theory, the wasps would have enough power/range to be in place before the coast guard got close. Since the badguys' focus would be on the coast guard, the wasps would be stealthy enough and provide a view of the hidden side of the boat (in case anything was quickly dumped) and a hint at the kind of arms the smugglers might have.
    • I don't think it'll fly below-deck. After all, you'll loose GPS and probably radio-contact.

      It'll probably just buzz about your cities, looking for 'terrorists'. I din't think it'll have the speed to keep up with a ship, especially a warship.

      Frankly, I don't quite see its use on ships. It seems to be programmable to follow a certain GPS path, filming things. Very useful for keeping an eye on the population, perfectly useless on ships.
    • Imagine an autonomous beowolf cluster of these.
      It would bring an entirely new level to the
      quality of trap/skeet shotgun competition.
      I, for one, can hardly wait...

  • Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by soniCron88 ( 870042 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:05AM (#12163823) Homepage
    "Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."

    Like hell I'd pay for it. Gov't should be think twice before spying on its citizens. Especially at such a close range!
    • Hope it hasn't invited any of it's mates [defensetech.org] to the picnic.

    • Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Richthofen80 ( 412488 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:46AM (#12164306) Homepage
      The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre. If the government wishes to spy on its own citizens, there are far more effective means. There are a large number of survelliance cameras in the US and elsewhere, not to mention satellite imagery and 'bugs'.

      The reasons they build UAVs in the first place is because they can't bring agents into the area, because its still too hostile. I hardly think a family picnic is so 'hostile' as to require a UAV.

      • Re:Privacy (Score:2, Insightful)

        by SupremeSpod ( 115262 )
        > The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre.

        Which is pretty much the rest of the world thanks to your idiot of a President!
        • >The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre.

          Which is pretty much the rest of the world

          Hey, during the last two weeks I've been basically walled off by a couple of coworkers who decided my radical stance on the Schiavo case -- the courts have determined that the medical report is accurate and that the husband's assessment of her wishes is the best available -- means I'm unamerican. Lots of talk about the "culture of life" as opposed to my "culture of death."

          • Lots of talk about the "culture of life" as opposed to my "culture of death."

            Staple him to the ground, leaving him unable to move, to speak, to do anything. Feed him through a tube and keep him from dying through an unholy conglomeration of machines. If he's not a veggie, after 15 years he'll be ready to begging for death.

            I had more to say, but the "right to life as a hollow undead corpse" movement has brought out the worst in me. Their hypocrisy stings.

      • Re:Privacy (Score:5, Funny)

        by Cyn ( 50070 ) <cyn AT cyn DOT org> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @08:46AM (#12164744) Homepage
        The reasons they build UAVs in the first place is because they can't bring agents into the area, because its still too hostile. I hardly think a family picnic is so 'hostile' as to require a UAV.

        Clearly you've never been to one of my family picnics!
      • The only people these UAVs will be spying on are enemy combatants in hostile theatre.
        How would you know who was in a location if you didn't look? Are you implying that someone in an area where this thing is aimed is automatically defined as the enemy, like in the Vietnam-era free-fire zones?

    • Exactly! I'd be more like swat it, gut it, sell the parts on e-bay.

  • Don't need a carrier for this? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:05AM (#12163824)
    Maybe they've made a special 4 foot long mini-nimitz to go with it? That way you could fit an entire carrier group in your garden pond. How cool would that be?

  • If you buzzed and took pictures at my picnic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:06AM (#12163825) Journal
    I do believe you'd get that thing swatted, stomped and whacked with a hammer/shovel/whatever-is-handy for good measure too. And you might be looking at a lawsuit too.

    Basically I see the point in this thing, but the metaphor in the summary is an awful one. That it's useful for a lot of other things, is obvious. But using it to annoy others and invade their privacy, is one use I'm not entirely looking forward to.

  • Read a little further... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tyroneking ( 258793 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:07AM (#12163826)
    and you'll find this article (http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001084.html [defensetech.org]) which talks about an even stranger flying vehicle.

  • Scales a little off? (Score:5, Funny)

    by dreamquick ( 229454 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:11AM (#12163837) Homepage
    "next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic"

    If its a 13 inch wasp (just over a foot), then quite frankly if something that size starts buzzing around a family picnic I doubt it would be able to hide from you all that well, and secondly I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to attack a foot-long wasp with a rolled up newspaper or magazine.

    If horror films have taught us nothing it's that when freakishly large mutant insects attack (TM) you just run and hope you aren't the extra with no name who's destined to die in the first 20 minutes.

    *sigh* Journalists these days...

    • If horror films have taught us nothing it's that when freakishly large mutant insects attack (TM) you just run and hope you aren't the extra with no name who's destined to die in the first 20 minutes.

      Absolutely true. In fact, the best thing you can do is grab a nearby member of the opposite gender who knows your name, exclaim each other's names loudly and with emotion, have a brief but emotional dialog about seeing each other when this is all over, then run for cover.

      Although this will almost certainly

  • One possible application (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Moggie68 ( 614870 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:12AM (#12163838)
    Search operation at sea. A couple of platoons of these could cover countless square kilometers in a hurry. You'd only need the spotters to monitor the video feed for any found subjects. Half the manpower as you'd skip the need for pilots.

    • Re:One possible application (Score:4, Informative)

      by amanox ( 862297 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:37AM (#12163896)
      You probably don't need a lot of spotters if you have the right video recognition software. A human can only watch so may screens at once, while software does not have this problem.
      Spotters will only have to watch video-fragments that the sofware recognizes as being potential hits.
      This could speed up and reduce cost of those search-actions a lot.

  • Design flaws? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Libor Vanek ( 248963 ) <libor.vanek@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:13AM (#12163839) Homepage
    - How recharge batteries in the middle of battlefield?
    - What about wind? Make war only when no wind?
    - My got - why do they test this on for the NAVY? I'm pretty sure, that range sucks (compared to old, but still usefull device called "radar"). I can imagine this usefull for street fights
    • They are perfect for boarding a ship from a safe distance. A hostile ship that has been stopped knows you will blow them out of the water if your wasps are attacked. You could land your team on the deck with a chopper in relative saftey.

      The most dangerous situations are when opposing forces are within close range of each other, the ability to "see" better in any situation is a distinct advantage.

      Wind - Read what Sun Tsu has to say about battlefield weather.

      Batteries - Handled by the supply line, if
      • Nobody cares if an "experimental" drone is shot out of the sky (or swatted at the picnic table.

        so many answers....

        How about it's mother?
        (ha-ha)

        how about it's inventor?
        (especially if it's the end of the DOD due to a lucky shot)

        how about it's user?
        (imagine, you go military, and get to play with this kinda hardware- hell, that's whattid cause me to sign up- excellent hardware toys- and you lose it, it's like losing a great laptop)

        budget freaks
        (how do we spend X billion a month there anyway)
    • How recharge batteries in the middle of battlefield?

      My first thought on seeing the picture was that the top-front wing area looks a whole lot like an array of solar cells. Wouldn't work too well at night, but during the day could give enough power to significantly extend the flight time.
  • ..and attach half a pound of TNT to it. A perfect robotic martyr.
    • I saw a discovery channel special where they were talking about nifty tech on the battlefield and one of the things that was shown was a flying thing very much like this, and it had a self destruct button that would make it explode with about the same force as a hand grenade. Ouch. If you wanted a slightly more elegant solution, you could outfit it with an air gun and have it shoot tiny ricin poison pellets. Especially if you want to take an installation without having to scrub the people bits off the wall
  • Cover propeller with a poison and you'll get a perfect assassin weapon!

    It can be operated from a distance, can penetrate through usual air defence and is virtualy invisible.

  • Balance? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 )
    Any amount of taxpayer money for violence. None for peace.

    • Re:Balance? (Score:2, Informative)

      by amanox ( 862297 )
      I wouldn't say none goes to peace, but indeed, a large ammount goes to war [deviantart.com].

    • Re:Balance? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Obstin8 ( 827030 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:13AM (#12163992)
      I think there are many civilian situations where this can be applied: Search and Rescue, firefighting , both urban (tall buildings) and wilderness (forest fires -- and no, not as a water carrier), remote inspection (dams, hydro towers), enviromental monitoring (forestry).

      This technology is not 'violent' per se, any more than the Internet is 'violence-based' just because the military had a (big) hand in building it.

      ---
      Remember, it's never to late to have a happy childhood!

    • Re:Balance? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jotok ( 728554 )
      Any amount of taxpayer money for violence. None for peace.

      Quick question, what qualifies as money for peace?

      I ask because someone repeated your exact words to me the other day and none of the things of which I could think on which we do spend money (other than making weapons or moving them and their operators around the globe) qualified as "peace."

      Environmentalism, education, health care, foreign aid, etc. Whatever your take on how the current administration is shortchanging these areas for allocation
      • Capitalism is a formula for competition.

        Marxism is a formula for peace (To each according to their needs etc). (Read what the Pope said about marxism - interesting given his role in defeating it.

        Education - particularly of the under-priveledged is the single-most effective tool for peace.

    • Re:Balance? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 )
      Any amount of taxpayer money for violence. None for peace.

      That's some pretty lame rhetoric, since it's just so demonstrably false. Ignore, for the moment, that we (the US taxpayers) have put more money and effort into establishing democracy, disaster relief, feeding and medicating poor countries, and so on, than any other economy in history. Let's focus instead on the technology mentioned in this article. Stuff like this, that makes our armed forces more efficient and risks fewer lives in the course of d

      • Re:Balance? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > Stuff like this, that makes our armed forces more efficient and risks fewer
        > lives in the course of doing their business, reduces violence.

        Anyone who believes taht making the American armed forces more efficient will result in less violence and less risked lives has clearly been living in another universe for the last 50 odd years.

        Worked out why most of the people on the planet are against the actions of the US government yet? How about reading `understanding power` or `hegemony or survival` by C
        • The fact that this post is marked insightful, means that insight is rarer than previously thought.

          Simple Math supports the original poster. Modern well equipped Military is able to operate with greatly reduced loss of life.

          More people died on the shores of France in one day of a WWII, than in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. This is the result of a Modern military.

        • Re:Balance? (Score:4, Informative)

          by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:48AM (#12165330)
          Anyone who believes taht making the American armed forces more efficient will result in less violence and less risked lives has clearly been living in another universe for the last 50 odd years.

          You're confusing tools and technology with the policies that put them to work. I think those policies are largely correct, but that's a different discussion. Once a policy decision has been made (say, to step in an help end the ethnic clensing of thousands of people in the Balkans), the newer tools and tactics of the US military achieved exactly what I'm talking about: effective use against the intended targets, and a great decrease in the side effects. If we had not spent so much money on developing those tools and training our people in their use, we'd still be having to use the approaches used in WWII. In fact, the US has so raised the threshold for expectations of minimal collateral damage as we do things like help disable the militants in Serbia and Croatia, that any slip-up of any kind is now seen as horrible. Any unintended loss of life is horrible - but we're able now to disable bad guys (even those who set up shop in mosques and schools) with a previously inconceivable surgical skill. This is different, of course, than, say, blowing up trainloads of commuters in Spain, or burning partiers alive in Bali nightclubs. But the same tools that allow us to keep equipment working in the combat field also allowed us to ferry supplies and support into the recent tsunami-damaged area well before any other sort of major relief could have helped there.

  • Poor performance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:24AM (#12163862)
    With sub 2 hour endurance, the Nimitz will have to be tied up to the pier to make this thing useful.

    I think a more viable role for it would be to spy on protesters right here in the good 'ol USA.

    As for expensive, my park flyer does the same thing (well, almost) and it was $500.
    • Why use a UAV when you can just walk amoung the protesters and take pictures [zombietime.com]. Besides... it is quite entertaining to sane people.
    • The article said that the carrier battle groups are going to be using these things for "force protection." I'm not sure, but I think that means watching the area when the ships are in port, and trying to prevent fiascos like the U.S.S Cole attack.

      If I am interpreting their verbage correctly, the AC's first sentence is exactly right. Having a cheap eye in the sky that might notice the next crop of knuckleheads loading dynamite into their boat around the bend in the river would be very useful. If all it does

  • Powerconsumption (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Underholdning ( 758194 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @05:40AM (#12163906) Homepage Journal
    At 12 pounds I wonder how long time this can be in the air before it needs to be recharged?
    • You got your 12 lbs be looking at the darpa sight, and reading about the related project. The one discussed here is only 7 oz.

      Congratulations thought on not only RTFA, but reading the related links.

      A representative will be by shortly to remove your account.

  • Surveillance (Score:5, Insightful)

    by elgatozorbas ( 783538 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @06:08AM (#12163975)
    A few years ago we had a master's thesis (jointly with the military school) evaluating the design of such a vehicle. These vehicles are mostly meant for observation, and can even be equipped with a radar (which was the case).

    The main challenge is, not surprisingly, the weight. One of the trade-offs we were faced with was wether to do signal processing on the plane (requiring more CPU), or on the ground (requiring more link capacity). Another problem is that, because it is so small, it is very prone to wind, vibrations etc which have to be taken into account when post-processing

  • Next time you hear something Buzzing around when you're at a family picnic you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action.

    Or, like the poster, you might only have time to think only once before swatting becomes expensive. Better to just swat immediately.

  • Micro Air Vehicle!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by richieb ( 3277 ) <richieb@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:07AM (#12164143) Homepage Journal
    When I was a kid we used to call these things "model airplanes". :-)

  • A great paper on MAV design (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:10AM (#12164152) Journal
    The same team that built this Wasp built a smaller (!) micro air vehicle a couple of years earlier. This paper [aerovironment.com] describes the design and implementation of the project at a good level of detail -- enough to show the complexity and tradeoffs in design, but not so much to bury the reader in equations and minutia.

    What fascinates me about MAVs is that you can do absolute cutting-edge research on a shoestring budget. Many prototypes can be designed, analyzed, built, tested, and thrown away.

    Thad Beier

  • Robofly (Score:3, Interesting)

    by heatuser ( 866205 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:10AM (#12164155)
    This story reminds me of the robot fly created by Ron Fearing of UC Berkeley and Michael Dickinson of Caltech some years ago. Check it out: http://journalism.berkeley.edu/projects/mm/spingar nkoff/flyorama/robofly.html [berkeley.edu]

  • Payload (Score:2, Funny)

    by fox9397 ( 873641 )
    Now if you were able to have a payload of say a water balloon or an M80 I could see its use in neighborhood warfare.

  • Wasp of Old (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Howler ( 17832 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @07:30AM (#12164240)
    I seem to remember seeing on a show called, "That's Incredible" many years ago...and I mean many, that there was an army vehicle in development that was called, "The Wasp".

    This "Wasp" however, was more along the lines of the old Dick Tracy trashcan flyers. "That's Incredible" even had footage of the vehicle in flight as demonstrated by Army personel. The intent was for rapid removal of injured from the battle field and for recon...mostly recon as I remember.

    The details as I recall them are that the pilot stood in this large "trash can" like thing that had room for two personel (standing/limping). It could fly at tree top level at about 60 to 70mph. It was stated that the vehicle used the jet engine from a cruise missle.

    The video they showed on the show showed the vehicle lifting vertically, sliding left, right and backwards as well as cruising at treetop level very quickly.

    I thought that it was the coolest thing I had seen way back then. Does anyone else happen to remember this?
    • hahahaha "That's Incredible", with Jon Davidson and whoever else... one of my earliest TV memories, from the late 70's to about '82 ;) That show also had spooky footage (and first-person accounts) of ghosts and UFO's and whatnot, at times (sort of an earlier "Unsolved Mysteries"), which spawned a lifelong interest in the paranormal.

      I vaguely vaguely remember that episode (I was probably around 7-8 years old)

      As usual, anything that took place in the B.G. era ("Before Google") is difficult to find informati

    • The Wasp and lots of other really neat, really funky stuff along the same lines can be found at this page. [vectorsite.net]

  • Oh, the humbling of naval aviation! (Score:3, Funny)

    by DulcetTone ( 601692 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:04AM (#12164921)
    The brave efforts of the past will never be repeated!

    Then: "Torpedo Eight has been wiped out, sir!"
    Now: "Torpedo Eight is stuck in a tree, sir!"

    tone
  • If I'm thinking of swatting something 13 inches long, I won't think twice about swatting it; I'll think twice about what caliber/gauge to use.

  • Why Nimitz? (Score:3, Informative)

    by mwood ( 25379 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:35AM (#12165217)
    One thing a carrier battle group is good for is to easily go to a place where nobody has any legitimate business being, cordon off a huge area, and handily destroy anybody who refuses to stay out. At sea there's *no* cover (optical or radar) above the surface, and zero collateral damage if you have to get seriously nasty.

    That's not all. If your test vehicle flies off and crashes, it sinks, winding up where only governments can get at it, and you probably have a recovery vehicle attached to scoop it up before anyone else does. You can position and reposition armored obstacles as needed for testing and have plenty of complex objects to find and photograph -- you don't have to build anything.
  • I'm surprised this would be considered for open water applications. seems that little motor would be hardly enough power to get through a stiff wind without exhausting its power supply. I guess thats why it is considered a field "test", but I think the best suited application would probably for scouting just ahead of ground forces in an urban, mountain or forest environment.

    Then again, maybe that little engine puts out such a buzzing that you can here it for miles unless you have the cover from the so
  • I recall a story on something similar a few years back. A University of Florida MAV research project that had little carbon fiber versions of these, with an integrated video camera. The camera feed went into a land based computer which did image processing, calculating the location of the horizon, therefore giving the computer an effective artificial horizon to work with. With this data, the computer sent rc signals back to the plane, basically providing it with wing leveling capabilities. Researchers c

  • WASP (Score:3, Funny)

    by eclectic4 ( 665330 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @11:32AM (#12166380)
    " you might think twice before swatting it could be an expensive action."

    A 13" White Anglo-Saxon Prodestant with two video cameras and a GPS device? I agree, you're just asking for trouble coming at that with a fly swatter.

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