You know those insect-like micro air vehicles (MAV) we've been seeing? Well, the ExoFly
aerobot is based on that camera-equipped
DelFly design, only this time it's gearing up for a trip to Mars -- maybe even Titan or Venus. Turns out flapping-wing flight is perfect for the
low-density Martian atmosphere. The current prototype -- weighing 17g with a wingspan of 350mm and flight time of twelve minutes -- is being tweaked for use in future missions to Mars. The folks at Delft University of Technology and Wageningen University, who've teamed up with Ursa Minor Space & Navigation, plan on increasing the weight to 20g and adding an on-board solar cell, which they reckon should extend the flight distance to 15km. There's also talk of using the digital terrain and image data gathered to simulate a 3D immersive environment for detailed analysis of extraterrestrial destinations -- hopefully viewable by those of us who don't have the billions to drop on a flight to Mars.
[Via New Scientist Space]
posted October 3rd 2008 10:46AM
Sweet! I hope we are able to travel to Mars in our lifetime.
Get your ass to Mars! :::said in a crazy Austrian accent:::
Hmmm I need to borrow that for a couple 'o' days please. I need to sp...err check on how my good neighbor is doing in his back yard
I'm sorry, how cool is that?? 17 grams, flying on Mars... Oh Brave New World, that hath such gadgets in it!
They should make it able to dock like a roomba so it can come back to the lander, recharge, and continue surveying a different 15 Km stretch!
Or just land and let the solar cells charge him up.
That would make it a 7.5 km strech
or a 15 km loop... but I bet engineers only think out and back...
Vertical take off and landing for recharging batteries is the current design baseline. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OuaBWM1L-U
Nasa were about to spend billions of dollars of research and development when some bright spark suggested they could just use one of those cheapo remote controlled dragonfles.
Not certain the atmosphere can be both low density and viscous considering how very thin and empty the Martian 'air' is. mf
damn that is creepy, sentry bots galore (atleast that is what I keep thinking). ever see the scene in starwars iv with the flying sentry bot?
Very cool.
I think its interesting how in scifi movies/books the first alien presence is sometimes an insectoid type robot. The biologically inspired designs make sense to use but are also making that fiction a reality when we perfect the technology and visit other worlds.
"perfect for the low-density viscous Martian atmosphere". WTF? How the hell could the atmosphere be "low-density" AND "viscous" at the same time?
Umm, copyright infringement to WowWee's DragonFly? (http://www.engadget.com/tag/dragonfly)
Yeah, the other way around... WowWee copied Delfly, but did a bad job anyway.
See also the ExoFly website: http://www.ursaminor.nl/67.html