Coming soon: indoor Predator drones with hellfire darts
Posted on 08/16/2009 7:40:23 AM PDT by Reeses
Just when you were getting used to the idea of unmanned aerial vehicles patrolling the skies over your city, they're beginning to enter buildings.
This flying robot designed by a U.S.-German team recently won a contest in which the goal was to autonomously navigate inside a simulated nuclear power plant and find and image a control panel without the aid of a GPS.
The Pelican, based on hardware designed by German start-up Ascending Technologies with programming by a team at MIT, accomplished the mission on its fourth attempt, but with only a few minutes to spare. It netted a $10,000 prize at the International Aerial Robotics Competition.
The Pelican is a micro air vehicle (MAV) with a quadrotor design, using four propellers on a carbon-fiber frame for lift and control. It maps hallways and rooms with a 32-yard-range laser scanner and stereo cameras while wirelessly reporting its progress to offboard computers. The location and mapping algorithm was implemented by the MIT team.
Entering its 20th year, the small but venerable IARC proposes challenges that cannot be met with current technology, military or otherwise. In its next mission, the sixth, MAVs will have to penetrate a simulated security compound, steal a flash drive and replace it with a dud before exiting safely and undetected.
It's a good thing MAVs still sound like a thousand mosquitoes due to rotor noise. Otherwise they might start putting spies out of business.
Coming soon: indoor Predator drones with hellfire darts
Big brother society control monitors of the future....autonomous watchdogs for the ‘man’
..better get the cat a helmet
I want to know what round works best on household UAVs?
I’m thinking .22 - shotgun would guarantee a hit but would badly mess up the drywall.
LQ
You could probably bring it down with a rubber band...
Drywall is cheap to repair. Probably $100-200, and you'd never know it was damaged. If from far enough away, a bit of drywall mud and light sanding might do the trick.
Neat trick, save it for the other drones on GMA or such.
three or four elastic bands strung together with 1/4 ounce fishing sinkers at each end
insurgent
A synthetic spider web would ruin this critter’s day.
>> You could probably bring it down with a rubber band...
Or steer it with a shop vac.
Clear fishing line (10-lb. test), stretched between walls at intervals about 6.5 feet off the ground interlaced vertically and horizontally. Gets wrapped around the blades, and “snap!”
Silly String?
Speaking as someone who has an electric R/C helicopter, they’re remarkably vulnerable to things like table legs entering the rotor arc. I have a Blade CX that is awaiting repairs due to that.
... or some fishing line hung vertically from the ceiling.
I don't think we are allowed to have this much fun...
FLYSWATTER.
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