Microdrones Fleet
Wiwo.de and The Register, and Fortune report that google has acquired a md4-1000 from the German company Microdrones GmbH. That type of UAV can fly for roughly one hours on a single charge and could photograph pretty much everything on tits way. Maybe Google is seeking a cheaper alternative to traditional aerial photography for Google Earth, maybe they are launching a “Google Spy” service, only the future will tell…
Here’s a prototype of an autonomous helicopter with four engines (quadrotor) capable of carrying out extreme movements in confined areas.
Daniel Mellinger, Nathan Michael and Vijay Kumar from Grasp Lab at the University of Pennsylvania have designed this ultra easy to use UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).
The quadricopter passes easily through windows in a vertical position regardless of the angle of the opening.
It does so at a high speed and stabilizes itself the right way up or upside down immediately after.
There could be many applications for this type of drone: military intelligence, for the police, or even for natural disasters such as the collapse of buildings.
The Micropilot MP-Vision Glider is an unmanned air vehicle.
It can be preprogrammed with specific flight plans in advance.
This drone can be optionally equipped with a camera to take snapshots of crops or forest areas, for example.
The MP-Vision has a radio control but can also fly autonomously.
It has GPS for taking geographically targeted photos, and it can be hand launched as well as land in restricted spaces.
This UAV is 1.22 m long, has a wing span of 2.44 m and weighs 2.72 kg.
Its flight endurance is about 55 minutes and its average speed is 60 km/h.
You can buy the Mircropilot MP-Vision UAV on RobotShop.
Stanford University’s Biomimetics Laboratory has developed a drone which is able to cling on walls and stay fixed.
The airplane clings on walls thanks to small spines on its front feet.
The main difficulty with this technology is being in a position to be able to make the plane land on a vertical surface at the right time and angle without falling.
The drone can stay in place for days and even resists winds. Its mission is to gather information on buildings and observe/film strategic places.
When it stays in place vertically the robot consumes practically no energy and in particular makes no noise.
When it has to leave the wall, the airplane quickly moves away then resumes its flight. Very impressive.
Drones come in various sizes and with various functions (transport, surveillance, combat) but often the existing planes and helicopters are still rather on the large side.
Fortunately at RobotShop we’ve already taken a step further in surveillance with our Skybotix helicopter drone.
In terms of planes, a new range of remote-controlled military prototypes is now appearing that can send high definition images in real time from war zones.
The video report below from Fox News shows us a drone plane which is small and doesn’t need a runway to take off (you can use your arm to throw it).
This model only weighs 1.8 kg (4 pounds) and can fly at a speed of 90 km/h (60 mph) for 1 and a half hours on a single battery load.
Even more incredible, it can climb to a height of 15 000 feet (an altitude of 4600 meters).
Another advantage of this type of drone is its price: several thousand dollars instead of several million for large drones.
What a wonderful idea to send a Drone to scan the Tyrolean Alps.
This drone is equipped with a High Definition camera; the pictures taken show the beauty of this magnificient landscape.
It skims the trees and the summit of the mountains while flying. This is very daring since its prototype could crash.
Tt also met some paragliders en route.
We sell the Drone Skybotix helicopter at RobotShop.
Details on RCgroups
The set up:
The Robust Robotics Group at MIT has created a QuadCopter which can travel about according to vocal instructions.
The technician in the video below gives the following order to a helicopter robot: “Go across room 124, then face the windows and go up.”
This drone carries out the order without difficulty.
The vocal orders are interpreted by an iPhone then transmitted to the computer and the helicopter.
Of course, the interpretation takes a little time but the demonstration is nevertheless really convincing.
Please note that we also offer a Drone Skybotix Helicopter for sale at RobotShop.
The Skybotix CoaX UAV Drone is an autonomous micro helicopter.
It is a coaxial helicopter robot ideal for research and education.
It features two brushless motors for the rotors and two servo motors for guidance.
To communicate, the Skybotix CoaX uses a Bluetooth connection and also an optional WiFi module. It can be guided with a 2.4 GHz remote control.
It has numerous applications and that’s what makes it interesting.
The Skybotix Drone can be used in professional fields: for customs patrols; monitoring traffic; searching for people in natural disasters and/or fires, avalanches, etc.; collecting information for the police, from maps, aerial photos and inspections of bridges and dams.
For education, it can be used for non-linear systems from autonomous navigation, estimation theory, from real-time control, from analysis in frequency fields, etc.
Two months ago, Helen Greiner, iRobot’s co-founder, won a contract worth several million dollars for her new company, Cyphy Works, to develop a new type of autonomous flying device able to inspect infrastructures, bridges, etc. But why develop this type of product? It doesn’t make too much sense because… RobotShop has it available for sale already!!
A video showing the CoaX using an optical mouse sensor:
Here it operates at a fixed distance from a wall allowing two people to bounce it back and forth as in table tennis:
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