Locust?
LOL ... no comment
outdoors, up to 150 mph is okay? 30,000 ft. okay? Insect size?
Kamikaze drones?
remember something said by someone down seven levels ... The world has no clue. We are so far advanced ... Never sit on the fence ... We’ve been moving since WWII.
sometimes am unable to restrain myself ... Never been worried once traveled that seven levels down and was shown nothing ...
Alternate Headline: DARPA Wants Drones to float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
Insect-like drone, able to find a target inside a house, and sting him with a lethal neurotoxin.
How do you power an insect sized drone?
Who is DARPA?
“Bed bugs” takes on a whole new meaning. We’ll need to get federal clearance before fumigating our homes.
--Dune.
I am beginning to smell SPICE.
“December 22, 2014
DARPA aims to give small unmanned aerial vehicles advanced perception and autonomy to rapidly search buildings or other cluttered environments without teleoperation
Military teams patrolling dangerous urban environments overseas and rescue teams responding to disasters such as earthquakes or floods currently rely on remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles to provide a bird’s-eye view of the situation and spot threats that can’t be seen from the ground. But to know what’s going on inside an unstable building or a threatening indoor space often requires physical entry, which can put troops or civilian response teams in danger.
To address these challenges, DARPA issued a Broad Agency Announcement solicitation today for the Fast Lightweight Autonomy (FLA) program. FLA focuses on creating a new class of algorithms to enable small, unmanned aerial vehicles to quickly navigate a labyrinth of rooms, stairways and corridors or other obstacle-filled environments without a remote pilot. The solicitation is available here: http://go.usa.gov/MGWx
The program aims to develop and demonstrate autonomous UAVs small enough to fit through an open window and able to fly at speeds up to 20 meters per second (45 miles per hour)—while navigating within complex indoor spaces independent of communication with outside operators or sensors and without reliance on GPS waypoints.
“Birds of prey and flying insects exhibit the kinds of capabilities we want for small UAVs,” said Mark Micire, DARPA program manager. “Goshawks, for example, can fly very fast through a dense forest without smacking into a tree. Many insects, too, can dart and hover with incredible speed and precision. The goal of the FLA program is to explore non-traditional perception and autonomy methods that would give small UAVs the capacity to perform in a similar way, including an ability to easily navigate tight spaces at high speed and quickly recognize if it had already been in a room before.”
“If successful, the algorithms developed in the program could enhance unmanned system capabilities by reducing the amount of processing power, communications, and human intervention needed for low-level tasks, such as navigation around obstacles in a cluttered environment. The initial focus is on UAVs, but advances made through the FLA program could potentially be applied to ground, marine and underwater systems, which could be especially useful in GPS-degraded or denied environments.
“Urban and disaster relief operations would be obvious key beneficiaries, but applications for this technology could extend to a wide variety of missions using small and large unmanned systems linked together with manned platforms as a system of systems,” said Stefanie Tompkins, director of DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office. “By enabling unmanned systems to learn ‘muscle memory’ and perception for basic tasks like avoiding obstacles, it would relieve overload and stress on human operators so they can focus on supervising the systems and executing the larger mission.”
Since the focus of the program is improving perception and reducing dependence on external sources—as opposed to designing new small UAVs—DARPA will provide performers selected for the program with the same small UAV testbed as government-furnished equipment.
A webcast Proposers Day is scheduled for Jan.6, 2015 from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern. Registration closes Friday, Jan. 2, 2015, at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. For more information and details on registering, please visit: http://go.usa.gov/MC2Q “
http://www.darpa.mil/NewsEvents/Releases/2014/12/22.aspx
The drone needs to be able to fly indoors at speeds up to 45 mph, automatically navigating through closed windows and closed doors after averting attack by my 35mph cat and her 35 mph claws = 70mph.
“Laterality in Cats: Paw Performance ...”
Paris study
http://pop.cerco.ups-tlse.fr/pdf0609/fabrethorpe_m_93_15.pdf