Robotics and flying things

[Opto-Mystic]

Here is another insight to teh field of robotics and drones
MilitarySkynet.com News - These Bad Ass Autonomous Military Robot Weapons will win all our Wars!

[Steve-flys]

Very cool and expensive toys

[flybywire]

What?  The military developing robots for warfare use?  Surely not?  Such allegations cannot be true, I refuse to believe it!!!

[secretman]

look a 2:49 the eagle quad :)

[Balders]

http://youtu.be/mXI4WWhPn-U

[dp106]

http://youtu.be/mXI4WWhPn-U

brilliant! :-)

[nub]

but aye imagine what they aint showing us 

http://youtu.be/mXI4WWhPn-U

witty.

[Cloudbuster]

The weak link in all of these and future designs is the battery. The person who solves the battery issue will be the bringer of a whole new world that will change beyond all recognition. Imagine a humanoid bot with a cell that lasts 50 years !!! All those things we have all seen in the sci fi films we have all watched are just a small step away !!! What we are doing here is just the begining !!!!

Regardss rob 

[Hands0n]

Yup, it has always been about the portable power source. We have had electric motors since virtually the beginning of the human use of electricity.  What has always eluded us is a portable source of electricity, be it stored or generated.

I half wonder if we are being restricted by traditional thinking about batteries, that is by the use of chemistry to achieve storage.  What if there is another means of either storage or generation in all of the physical formats of cell we currently need and use.  Do we need to defy the laws of physics, or is there simply a way of generating/storing the electrons that we have not yet considered?

[Cloudbuster]

Mmmmm !!! Is it a case of storage at all ??? What happened to the research being done on wireless electricity ???? Surely some kind of atmospheric global electricty system is a possibility. Maybe some kind of dualband microwave system is a possibilty... Oooer i am starting to think outside my own box aaarrrggh LOL !!!

Regards rob

[Hands0n]

I have ridden a EV Maxi scooter for four year (Vectrix) and became acutely aware of the current (sic) limitations of battery technology. That had NiMh batteries arranged in two packs carrying 150vdc (wouldn';t want to hold on to that) which gave me a range of approximately 35 miles for my particular commute. The journey comprised of 2 miles at 30mph, 17 miles at 50mph and another 7 miles at 30mph (26 miles total, door to door).   Only a few times did I run dangerously low, where the Vectrix would go into limp home mode, max speed 10mph - not funny in London traffic.  I survived.

In all of those four years what I most craved was portable generation - turning a fuel into electricity to run the vehicle. I always carried in mind those diesel-electric trains that have been around since forever.  Could something like that be miniaturised? Impractical for our hobby, but what options are there to create electrons out of thin air? We are still committed to spinning copper coils within magnets!

Transmitted electricity? Well I wonder about that - is that even safe? Thinking about people living under or near high tension power lines and the still unproven (?) case of leukemia prevalence in those areas.

Arrrgh, this stuff fries my brain cells. ::)

[Cloudbuster]

Here yah go danny !!!

http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_giler_demos_wireless_electricity.html

This will be beaten i am sure !!! I have already been doin the sums on a gas turbine powered multi rotor LOL !!! The gas turbine is purely used to generate electricty powering the same type of power cell that formula one uses in their KERS systems !!! The downside with multirotor motors is they require a lot of current and generating the amounts of urgs required for continuous flight presents a lot of problems. I can see a one man quad short range low altitude transport being a viable propostion very very soon !!!

Regards rob

[Opto-Mystic]

Love teh idea of a gas turbine on a quad.. a miniature version of the old Rover gas turbine car... Hate the thoughts of a quad crashing and causing a grass/bush fire.

I too can see the one man quads being viable but not as general transport like the not so humble car) - they already exist experimentally in the States.

Remember Sir Christopher Cockrell';s invention: the HoverCraft?.. all the palaver over is it a an aircraft or is it not - the driver is called a pilot... Just imagine all the rules regulations arguing before Joe Public would be allowed to commute to work in one! You would probably be obliged to have a co-pilot to ensure public safety in case of... That would throw the ';one man'; drone idea out of the window!

Interesting thought though...

[Cloudbuster]

Hi donald ... The issue of is it safe to let joe public loose with such an easy answer !!! Everybody has the right to drive a car and we spend all day driving on roads that are just over two widths of a family car aiming at each other at closing speeds that start at 60mph and we manage to do this with a very low loss rate per million drivers. The great thing about flight is there is nothing but other aircraft and the ground to bump into which with modern technology making low altitude low speed flight a very safe prospect. Using simple airbag tech and F1 tech building a very safe low altitude craft is very very possible to do and could be built for a suprisingly low cost, probably about the same as a small family car. Compared to the car the components are few and cheap, the most expensive parts will be the batteries and safety cell.

Regards rob

[Hands0n]

Rob

Thanks for the link - I don';t know how I missed that TED talk 

I';m not entirely convinced we';ll see individual aircraft, certainly not before we see wholesale autonomous road-going vehicles.  But certainly the prospect of using the low altitudes instead of constantly carving up the land makes a lot of sense, once the practicalities are worked out.  And I am totally convinced that they will be.

[Cloudbuster]

Rob

Thanks for the link - I don';t know how I missed that TED talk 

I';m not entirely convinced we';ll see individual aircraft, certainly not before we see wholesale autonomous road-going vehicles.  But certainly the prospect of using the low altitudes instead of constantly carving up the land makes a lot of sense, once the practicalities are worked out.  And I am totally convinced that they will be.

Hi danny .... The practicalities of personal flight order is actually quite simple, modern GPS allows for very accurate height and distance seperation. The first 50ft are for hover only to get to your flight line !!! After this the airspace is divided by height variations of 10 feet  (this allows for vertical seperation) once you have chosen your heading (i.e 270 degrees west all traffic travelling on that heading will be at a single height which will be 50 ft + 270 ft with 10ft height seperation between headings) close proximity or collisions can be avoided using the same flarm tech used now by glider pilots !!! Its all possible !!!!

Regards rob

[Hands0n]

Well one thing I have learned through living the technology revolution is ... never say never ::)

I think using the air is much less devastating than carving up the land like we do.  In the past 25 years I have watched Kent be systematically concreted over and it is heartbreaking to witness.  Public transport, as we know it, has gone beyond its practicality and usefulness for anything beyond leisure travel.  Commuting and transportation of goods and services was never the purpose of buses and rail. That they';ve survived this long is a miracle in itself.  Personal transport as we see it today is most times horrid, going much further than the driveway means parking up in one traffic jam or another. Today a 70 minute round trip by motorcycle turned into a 3-1/2 hour marathon in the car! 

Yet above our heads is, for all intent and purposes, an infinite amount of transport space, if we can just figure out how to use it safely and effectively.