AUVSI and ONR’s 12th Annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition starts up tomorrow (July 30th), with two days of prelimiary runs and testing, followed by 2 days of competition this weekend. Last year’s winner, University of Maryland, along with 29 other teams are signed up to compete. Several of the teams have blogs where you can follow the competition as it unfolds. Cornell (update: along with ETS) will also be tweeting the events. You can read the full rules for this year’s competition, entitled “Divin’ Dozen”, here.

Personally, I’m rooting for the NCSU Underwater Robotics Club – a club I helped found. Go wolfpack!

Update: Here’s a nice compilation shot of a bunch of different vehicles at the competition. The picture was taken by the Naval Academy Team.

Update: We have winners!

AeroVironment, maker of several important military UAVs like the Wasp, Raven, and Dragon Eye , has received a Phase II SBIR grant from DARPA to continue work on it’s hummingbird-like nano UAV (NAV), which propels itself with flapping wings. In the video shown above, the vehicles stability control is shown, including take-offs from a standstill.

“The goals of the NAV program — namely to develop an approximately 10 gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5 meter per second wind gusts, can operate inside buildings, and have up to a kilometer command and control range — will stretch our understanding of flight at these small sizes and require novel technology development.”

The Phase II contract is worth $2.1 million USD and will continue through the summer of 2010.

[Via Slashdot]

 

General Atomics Aeronautical Systems has unveiled it’s latest version of the wildly popular Predator Drone – the Predator C Avenger. The Avenger, which made its first flight tests earlier this month, is expected to be a viable product within 10 – 12 months, and could be patrolling the unfriendly skys shortly thereafter.

The Avenger has landing gear from the F-5 aircraft, approximately a 66″ wingspan, and can carry up to 3,000 lbs of weapons or surveillance equipment. The new Predator also has many design modifications to achieve a higher level of stealth, including a, “vertically-oriented V-tail [that] both deflects radar and shields the 4,800-lb. thrust Pratt & Whitney Canada’s PW545B engine exhaust’s infrared signature”, and stealth techniques from planes like the B-22 and B-2.

It really doesn’t pay to be a Bad Guy these days.

NASA is working on an UAV to fly above the surface of mars and take high resolution video of the landscape below. The ARES mission will involve a 6.5 meter wingspan UAV that will cruise along 1 mile above the martian surface. The cameras on board are very high resolution, such that, “if there was a candy wrapper on the surface, we could read the name and ingrediants off of it.”

Once the plane reaches the surface of Mars, NASA plans on live streaming the video feed from the plane. That will definitely be something to watch for. No word on how long the plane will remain airborne.

Boeing reported today that it has successfully destroyed several flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) using a laser weapon mounted on a truck. The weapon was mounted to an Avenger Air Defense vehicle, which normally uses surface-to-air missiles for attacks. The successful test involved the Laser Avenger tracking and destroying three UAVs in flight, which set a milestone for, “the first time a combat vehicle has used a laser to shoot down a UAV”.

Boeing was a little reserved when addressing the question of how exactly the UAVs were destroyed, only saying, “A hole was burned in a critical flight control element of the UAV, rendering the aircraft unflyable.” As for how long it took to do this, what “critical flight control element” it was, or if such a system is truly viable in a combat situation, that is left to the reader’s imagination. It should also be noted that Boeing has apparently made significant progress with this system, as only about 1 year ago they were proclaiming the destruction of IEDs by the Laser Avenger.

“We doubled the laser power; added sophisticated acquisition, tracking and pointing capability; and simplified and ruggedized the design,” said Lee Gutheinz, Boeing program director for High-Energy Laser/Electro-Optical Systems. “Boeing developed and integrated these upgrades in less than a year, underscoring our ability to rapidly respond to warfighters’ needs.”

An interesting point is that Boeing seems to be trying to sell the Military on the idea of destroying UAV threats to our soldiers, while, to my knowledge, there haven’t been any such threats to date. In fact, robotic air authority seems to be solidly on the USA’s side. Do they know something we don’t, or are they just being pessimistic?

Regardless, while we mourn for our robotic bretheren, I say this is pretty darn cool.