A Drone Helicopter That Can Land On a Moving Truck

garymortimer writes with a story (the accompanying video is worth watching) of an unmanned helicopter than can automatically land on a moving surface. Though it's shown landing on a bed of a moving truck, the real purpose is for sea-based use: "This automatic system for take-off, landing and deck-landing of UAVs is the fruit of the joint expertise of Thales and DCNS. Thales is responsible for the positioning system and its interface with the UAV system, the supply of a UAV demonstrator system and slaving of the flight path along a trajectory. DCNS is responsible for predicting the vessel motions, the harpoon system as well as the interface and integration with the vessel."

perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

http://xkcd.com/652/

"We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future."

So what...

[Anonymous Coward]

We at Higheye b.v. did the exact same thing with DCNS years ago..
at sea...
on a moving barge...
and our HE80 VTOL UAV.

The test was largely successful even under rougher than expected sea, yes this was in international water by the coast of France.
If you are looking for the website we are dutch.

EJ Goeree
Former Chief Engineer
Higheye b.v.

Re:Nice start

[RicktheBrick]

1. Attach cable from ship to the helicopter. 2. Helicopter goes to full throttle. 3. Make cable as taut as possible. 4. Pull the helicopter down onto the deck. Under these conditions if the deck suddenly rises up a couple of feet the helicopter will respond by rising up a couple of feet too. This is how the US Navy does it today.

Re:Impressive

[Anonymous Coward]

You also forget experience, those minor incremental improvements. In humans a trainer passes only a very small percentage of that knowledge to a trainee, but with machines, it's as simple as "version += 1"
And unlike humans, while you may have a few pilots, maybe hundreds in a very large airforce, getting there takes a lot of time. Replacing even one of those people is expensive and time consuming compared to installing some software.

Ships, planes, cars, tanks were initially built for their user, the human part. If you removed it from the start, sound barrier would have been broken earlier, space age would have started sooner, and so on.

Look at space probes, you don't need people inside, the software can do what humans did, but better and constantly. You don't need to add room for the crew, supplies or additional systems, or more importantly research new technologies.

In terms of mechanized weapons, what's the next step? A jet that constantly moves and attacks at mach 3? Oh wait, we have those, they're called missiles, maybe they could shrink them a lot and you get smart bullets? Given the level of miniaturization technology has reached for quite some time, I really wouldn't be surprised if they already exist but simply aren't public knowledge ...

Still, human labour is cheap and getting cheaper my the minute.