Onyx precision guided parachutes

If you've ever fallen out of a plane before (or perhaps been pushed, not that we're bitter or anything), you might've realized that while hitting the ground isn't usually hard to manage, hitting a particular area of ground can be rather difficult. Even more so with unmanned cargo drops, which can land miles from their unintended drop point due to winds or a mis-timed release. Well, Atair Aerospace is bringing some hot "flocking" technology of theirs to bear on the problem, which allows you to deploy 50 or more cargo parachutes in the same airspace, from as high as 35,000 feet, and have them all autonomously glide for as far as 30 miles before landing within 50 meters of a preprogrammed target. The "Onyx" parachutes have parafoil systems to direct themselves, and the flocking and "Active Collision Avoidance" technologies allow the robotic parachutes to communicate with each other and avoid messy accidents. Altair was awarded a $3.2 million contract by the US Army to supply Onyx systems, slightly out-doing our bid of $5.95 and half a box of French fries to use the system for automatic tradeshow schwag deployment.

[Nick @ Oct 6th 2006 10:01PM]

"which can land miles from their unintended drop point"

no kiddin!

[pbase @ Oct 6th 2006 10:06PM]

Precision parachute drops?

You've gotta be flockin' kidding me!

[Blaine @ Oct 6th 2006 10:15PM]

Let's hope that they're more precise than those smart bombs we drop.(ba-zing!)

[Murc @ Oct 6th 2006 10:33PM]

cool.

Whis will deffiniatly help the military..who does the most airdrops then anyone else on earth.
But it should also helpout food & aid drops that are done in countries like Africa.

oh...and smartbombs are smart. There accuracy continually gets better over timem with new versions and what not. The newest ones can actually hit a truck moving at 40mph!

[lakiolen @ Oct 6th 2006 11:10PM]

I suppose landing away from the unintended target is better that away from the intended one.

[Blaine @ Oct 6th 2006 11:16PM]

"Smart" bombs have advanced by magnitudes since 1991. But war takes place under imperfect conditions. Targeting data may be faulty, computer chips can fail, and greater accuracy can breed overconfidence. In fact 90% of the people killed by bombs in the first weeks of the war were civilians. Watch 'Why We Fight', good movie. Anyways, this isn't about bombs...it's about an uber cool parachute that doesn't kill people, yay parachutes!

[ReDeViL @ Oct 7th 2006 12:34AM]

wow.......

[Plsk1n @ Oct 7th 2006 1:49AM]

intresting... though it took a while for someone to come up with this..

[Baby-G @ Oct 7th 2006 9:37AM]

well..... now pablo escobar will want some of these...... thses bad boys will put his toy's right on target for extraction....

[tiuk @ Oct 7th 2006 11:01AM]

Yeah, dead drug lords can always use better parachutes.

[c26 @ Oct 7th 2006 11:35AM]

I once went to a party at this guy's house / Altair's lab&studio.
I can honestly say, it was the coolest private residence I have ever been to in Bklyn... Mad scientist meets amusment park.