

Lockheed Martin wants a fingertip-sized UAV in every soldier’s backpack - ukdm
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/lockheed-martin-wants-a-fingertip-sized-uav-in-every-soldiers-backpack-20110819/

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BenoitEssiambre
Interesting fact from the second video: The vehicle is controlled by a
Honeycomb app.

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bbq
"Lockheed Martin wants billions of dollars"

Well, no shit.

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jws
Billions seems unlikely. 450k enlisted men, 100k total force in Afghanistan.
Let's guess the Army will want 250,000 of them. You'd need to sell them for
$4k each to get that first billion dollars.

Sure, you can sell the first few for more than that during testing, you have
to recover the cost of the documentation and supporting materials the army
will require plus pay all the people you hire to interface with their
counterparts, but ultimately I think you'll end up in the $1k neighborhood and
still be making a huge per unit profit. ($200 would be a nice price for the
consumer version. Maybe more depending on how nice a camera you put on it.)

(I assume the soldier will already be carrying a suitable display.)

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qq66
Meanwhile, the incredibly nimble Syma S107G helicopter sells for $20 shipped
on Amazon (affiliate).

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A8ZRB0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A8ZRB0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tlie=UTF8&tag=timetravele0720&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=B004A8ZRB0)

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mhb
What's the advantage of using the asymmetrical one-wing design which
undoubtedly makes it harder to control?

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darklajid
"Notice how stable it hovers. This exploits the natural stability of maple
seeds" (erm.. I tried to quote as good as possible).

And it seems to reduce the complexity of the device itself a lot. One motor.
One wing. I looked at it and thought "Wow! What a great and 'simple' (as in
reduced) idea".

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mhb
I read that too. I just don't believe it. I think a two wing version with the
same dihedral angle would be just as stable. Their design might eliminate the
"complexity" of one motor though maybe they can do two wings and one motor.
Unclear whether the difficulty in controlling it (which they also mention) is
worth the tradeoff. There is the gee whiz factor though.

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darklajid
I think the complexity in controlling it is due to the fact that the whole
craft is rotating (where's the front..?). If you want to remove that
complexity, you need to add a lot more than just another wing and add a number
of mechanical parts that can fail. As it is right now, the whole complexity is
the software (which should be safely stored).

In addition, this design lends itself to small sizes in a great way. Shrink
the center parts/electronics/, shrink the single wing and you get a very, very
compact tool. Another wing nearly doubles the length of the whole thing.

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mhb
The other wing would fold next to the first wing. Since there would be more
wing area, the first wing could be made smaller. Not necessarily any
additional moving parts needed.

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BrainScraps
Smaller: NAV (Nano Air Vehicle) by Aerovironment - engineering folks behind
the General Motors EV1

bottom-right corner of their homepage: <http://www.avinc.com/>

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wgx
They didn't make it clear in the interview if they'd solved the imaging
problem or not yet. How do you get usable video (or stills) back from a camera
that's rotating constantly - and potentially, erratically.

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jamesbkel
He didn't explain how and to what extent, but in the second video he does say
that they managed to "solve" that problem.

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wgx
Ah so he does - although no video from the 'copter.

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BenoitEssiambre
When flying it looks eerily like a classic flying saucer. It even has a sci-
fi-ish tone to its sound.

