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It's not a flying fish, it's a submarine-launched UAV

Sharif Sakr — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 09:25:00 -0500

VTOL may be old news already, but here's another great USP for any UAV: the ability to launch from a submerged submarine. The technology is still in development, but the Navy wants to try it from periscope depth during exercises in the Pacific Ocean next year. If all goes to plan, a Switchblade folding-wing drone will be ejected from the submarine's trash disposal unit and then carried to the surface by an SLV ('submerged launch vehicle'), which will keep it dry, point it into the wind and then hurl it heavenwards so it can go a-snooping. Whether the experiment succeeds or fails, we've glimpsed a worrying possibility: submarines are capable of dumping their trash right into the ocean. Until now, we sort of assumed they took it home with them.

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AeroVironment to light up I-5 with EV chargers, add 'Oregon Trail' to the Green Highway

Sean Buckley — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 09:33:00 -0400

Retire your oxen and sell your wagon, the Oregon Trail just went electric. Okay, not the real, historic Oregon Trail, but a respectable 150-mile stretch of Interstate Five. The Oregon Department of Transportation is teaming up with AeroVironment to dot an undisclosed number of 480-volt Level 3 chargers between the California / Oregon state border and the Willamette Valley area as part the West Coast Green Highway initiative. The project aims to cover the entire I-5 corridor with electric vehicle chargers, spanning from the tip toe of the Golden State, all the way up to Washington's hat. Oregon's leg of the project should be ready for drivers this fall, making roadtrips to the Beaver State accessible to EV owners -- dysentery free. Hit the break for dry, but factual press release.

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Hawaii funding deployment of up to 320 public EV chargers, islander Leafs say 'mahalo'

Tim Stevens — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 22:26:00 -0400

If you don't have far to go, an electric car can make a lot of sense. You know what group of people doesn't have far to go? People who live on an island, that's who. For this reason we're feeling some synergistic love as the State of Hawaii partners with AeroVironment, a company that also makes some goofy looking UAVs for DARPA, to deploy up to 320 public EV charging stations plugs across Kauai, Hawaii Island, Maui, and Oahu. All will be 240v Level 2 units that can charge an average EV in between four to eight hours. That's plenty of time to grab your board and get worked on some swell -- or to work on your tan if you're feeling a little less aggro.

Update: Dan wrote in to let us know that Better Place is also getting a piece of this pie, securing $854,000 for "charging stations on all islands and the introduction of EVs to a rental car fleet."

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DARPA-funded Nano Hummingbird spybot takes flight (video)

Donald Melanson — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 19:10:00 -0500

We were plenty impressed when we saw the initial tests of AeroVironment's robo-hummingbird -- now officially dubbed the Nano Hummingbird -- but we can't say they quite prepared us for the final product that the DARPA-funded company is now showing off. Not only does the bot look and fly like a real hummingbird (at least if you don't look too closely), but it packs a built-in camera and a downlink of some sort that's capable of transmitting live video. According to the company, the hummingbird's also able to hover for up to eight minutes, reach speeds of eleven miles per hour in forward flight, and remain stable in wind gusts of five miles per hour -- not to mention make a perfect landing. Head on past the break to check it out in action -- it may well be one of the few chances you're actually able to see one in the wild.

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DARPA contractor shows off tiny robo-hummingbird UAV

Donald Melanson — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:57:00 -0400

We've seen plenty of tiny UAVs (or NAVs -- Nano Aerial Vehicles -- as they're also known), but none quite like the robo-hummingbird that's been in development at DARPA-contractor AeroVironment for the past couple of years. While we haven't heard much about it during that time, the company recently completed its most advanced prototype to date, dubbed Mercury, and it's taken advantage of the opportunity to show off all the progress it has made. As you can see in the video after the break, the bot is able to fly about and hover in place by mimicking the wing movement of a real hummingbird and, of course, be controlled completely untethered. What's more, the firm says that the final version will actually look like a real hummingbird as well, and be able to be controlled from up to a kilometer away -- even inside buildings, where a hummingbird won't look at all out of place.

[Via Danger Room]

Filed under: Robots

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DARPA's Nano Air Vehicle program puts UAVs on a diet

Darren Murph — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 04:56:00 -0400

It's not like DARPA hasn't been trying to miniaturize unmanned aerial vehicles already, but its Nano Air Vehicle program is yet another attempt to find tiny, ultra-lightweight devices that could theoretically "perform indoor and outdoor military missions." More specifically, it's looking for something less than 7.5-centimeters and under 10-grams, and the overriding goal is to "explore novel, bio-inspired, conventional and unconventional configurations to provide the warfighter with unprecedented capability for urban mission operations." Reportedly, AeroVironment already has an idea in mind for such a drone (pictured), but as these type things always go, we've no idea how soon we'll see critters like these take to the skies with a thumb-sized American flag plastered on the side.

[Via BoingBoing]

Filed under: Robots

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US Air Force takes delivery of micro unmanned aircrafts

Darren Murph — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 09:12:00 -0400

Shortly after the Navy announced its intentions to utilize unmanned combat aircrafts, the US Air Force is making sure it doesn't get left behind by taking delivery of "its initial BATMAV micro unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)." Among the diminutive crafts is a legion of Wasp IIIs, which have a wingspan of 29-inches, weigh in at just one-pound apiece, and carry integrated forward and side looking electro-optical color / infrared cameras. The backpackable devices are meant to be hand-launched and aim to provide "real-time video imagery to a handheld controller used by tactical units" in reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition missions. Now, if only these things had an ultra-lightweight chaingun strapped under each wing and were available at the local BX, we'd be sold.

[Via The Raw Feed]

Filed under: Transportation

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