SideArm can be shipped inside a standard 20-foot shipping container for easy transport by truck, ship, rail, Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport aircraft and Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopter. The small system is designed to operate in truck-mounted, ship-mounted, and standalone/fixed-site facilities. A crew of only two to four people can set-up or stow the system in minutes.
SideArm owes its small size to combining its launch and capture equipment into a single rail that folds for transport.
Innocorp has a new drone that is a flying submarine. It is an unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone and iot can transitio from water to air to land without any individual or multiple deployments, fission of elements, (as in rockets), or complicated maneuvering.
Like the Murres, a unique seabird which can circumnavigate in the air and in water, SubMurres does both in unprecedented fashion. SubMurres has all the key features of a submarine, including complete marine functionality, communication tower with periscope for panoramic viewing of above-water landscape, dual propulsion blades, fully-articulated rotors that emerge as needed, sensors, and more. But it doesn’t end there.
The dual submarine aircraft moves ubiquitously from water to air. As a submarine, Submurres glide silently underwater performing its mission as it surfaces. Once on the water surface its flight system is engaged and its four rotors emerge from their compartments as vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) is initiated. Once airborne, there is no expulsion of parts. SubMurres simply flies unfettered, with all components intact. Its landing apparatus allow it to settle on terrain, and its second camera system allows it to fully capture surroundings. From land, it can be directly re-dispatched to water. No need to redeploy or to be picked up by another carrier aircraft, unlike any of the chief aeronautic industry or Navy-funded university’s latest submersive drone models.
What do you get when you give a design tool a digital nervous system? Computers that improve our ability to think and imagine, and robotic systems that come up with (and build) radical new designs for bridges, cars, drones and much more — all by themselves. Take a tour of the Augmented Age with futurist Maurice Conti and preview a time when robots and humans will work side-by-side to accomplish things neither could do alone.
When you picture deliveries by drone, you’re probably imagining a glittering craft winching the latest purchase from Amazon Prime down to excited suburban consumers. A thrilling technology, but ultimately one that serves to do little more than put delivery drivers out of work and further fuel our rampant addiction to consumerism.
However, in other less economically developed parts of the world, the humble drone could be nothing short of a revolution.
“Obviously robotics and autonomous technologies will have very large political and social ramifications in industrial countries, but we feel in poorer countries that are not industrialised and never going to be industrialised, then robotics can buy you some efficiency that you would not otherwise have,” said Redline Cargo Drone Network founder and director of Afrotech-EPFL Jonathan Ledgard in a talk at WebSummit about his ambitious project.
The Navy’s Knifefish underwater mine hunting drone recently helped identify and destroy a number of targets in a key test of the system’s development, service officials said.
During a recent assessment in Narragansett Bay, R.I., the 21-foot Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) used low-frequency broadband synthetic aperture sonar to find stealthy undersea mine targets, said Capt. Jon Rucker, program manager, Unmanned Maritime Systems, PEO LCS.
“We put eight targets down across a range. The vehicle went around to detect the targets,” Rucker explained.
Bat Bot, a lightweight flier with thin silicone wings stretched over a carbon fiber skeleton, can cruise, dive and bank turn just like its namesake, researchers report February 1 in Science Robotics, Joinfo.com reports with reference to Science News.
Such a maneuverable machine could one day soar up the towering structures of a construction site, flying in and out of steel beams to help keep track of a building’s progress, study coauthor Seth Hutchinson, a roboticist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said in a news briefing January 31.
Other aerial robots, like some drones, aren’t so agile, relying on four whirling rotor blades to lift off the ground, Hutchinson said. These bots also have trouble flying in the wind, because they can exert force in only one direction, he said. Bat Bot’s flexible wings could make it a more versatile flier.
San Francisco-based research company Otherlab is developing a new concept for disposable delivery drones made of cardboard.
The project is funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Agency (DARPA), and it aims to develop drones which can be used to deliver medical supplies and other cargo to remote or hard-to-reach locations.
The drone is designed to make only an outward journey – no returns – and then be discarded. The fact that the drone only has to make a one-way trip will extend its range. The vehicle’s primary method of propulsion will be gliding.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Holy drone, Batman! Mechanical masterminds have spawned the Bat Bot, a soaring, sweeping and diving robot that may eventually fly circles around other drones.
Because it mimics the unique and more flexible way bats fly, this 3-ounce prototype could do a better and safer job getting into disaster sites and scoping out construction zones than bulky drones with spinning rotors, said the three authors of a study released Wednesday in the journal Science Robotics. For example, it would have been ideal for going inside the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan, said study co-author Seth Hutchinson, an engineering professor at the University of Illinois.
The bat robot flaps its wings for better aerial maneuvers, glides to save energy and dive bombs when needed. Eventually, the researchers hope to have it perch upside down like the real thing, but that will have to wait for the robot’s sequel.
