What Was On Display At A Drone Trade Show

Global Hawk Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk is the highest-flying of the military’s current fleet of UAVs. With its 116-foot wingspan, it can climb to 60,000 feet and has a range of 9,500 nautical miles. Another show-goer gives a sense of scale. Eric Hagerman

Scenes From A Drone Trade Show -- Popular Science

Take a photo tour of AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International trade show in Denver

When most people think "trade show," what comes to mind are harsh fluorescent lights and hollow convention halls, all filled with corporate drones (of the human variety) idly wandering through booths hyping the latest in office paper technology, stopping only to hover over bowls of stale candy and cheap swag.

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My Comment: The photo gallery is here.

When Drones Go Wild

When Drones Go Rogue In Friendly Skies, How Do We Bring Them Home? -- Popular Science

An advanced fly-by-wire system capable of landing grossly damaged unmanned aircraft—demonstrated on video saving a plane missing 80 percent of one wing—is key to solving one of unmanned flight’s biggest problems.

Word spread last week that a rogue MQ-8B Fire Scout copter drone entered restricted airspace just 40 miles shy of Washington D.C. after losing contact with its operators. The revelation occurred smack in the middle of AVUSI 2010, the world’s largest UAV tradeshow. And it served as a poignant reminder that all the game-changing technology on display here at the Denver Convention Center still has some innovating to do, especially when flight crews lose control of their unmanned craft.

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My Comment: The video is impressive .... watch it.

A New Picture Of The X-47B

X-47B Northrop Grumman

Boot Process Complete, Awaiting Command -- Popular Science

Northrop Grumman has released a new photo of their carrier-based attack drone, the X-47B. It's due to make its first flight later this year as part of the Navy's J-UCAS program seeking a multi-purpose sea-based drone.

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Mini Drones Built To Kill

Assassin Drone Aerovironment's new "Anubis" project sounds eerily similar to the Switchblade drone, seen here Aerovironment

Air Force's Flying Assassin Robot Enters Final Development Stage -- Popular Science

The deadly drone could find and dispatch single-person targets, with "very low collateral damage"

Missile strikes by Predators, Reapers, or other aerial drones usually result in messy explosions on the ground. Now the never-ending but perhaps futile quest to attain zero collateral damage may take another step forward, with a small micro-drone missile that can kill individual targets from afar. A new $1.18-million, Phase-III Air Force contract (Phase III is typically the final development phase) for the "Anubis" drone has been awarded to the firm Aerovironment, Aviation Week's Ares Defense Blog reports.

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The Future For UAVs In The U.S. Air Force

MQ-Mb multirole fighter prepped for a precision strike mission

From The Popular Mechanics:

When the Air Force recently mapped out a game plan to 2047, its report contained a big surprise: Fewer pilots and more robotic planes acting on their own. Will the airman-centric service accept a future with fewer cockpits? And are we ready for UAVs that can fire their weapons without human permission?

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How UAVs Will Replace The Air Force's Current Fleet

When unmanned aircraft can refuel one another, their time on a mission will be dramatically extended. The Air Force Research Laboratory is spending $49 million over the next four years to create a system that will allow UAVs to autonomously refuel in the air, as seen in this 2007 RQ-4 Global Hawk test.

From Popular Mechanics:

In its latest plans for the future, the Air Force envisions swapping its pilots for a fleet of versatile—and affordable—unmanned airplanes. A single UAV with interchangeable payloads could replace several legacy airplanes. Here's a look at some possible trades.

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Band of Bots: Two Military Robots Team Up To Cover Land and Air

From Popular Mechanics:

In war, teamwork is everything, even if you're a robot. Just as human soldiers and airmen support each other, teams of robots will likely roam future battlefields, helping each other on missions.

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The Present And Future Of Unmanned Drone Aircraft: An Illustrated Field Guide

The Avenger: General Atomics Aeronautical Systems

From Popular Science:

Inside the wild kingdom of the world’s newest and most spectacular species of unmanned aircraft, from swarming insect ’bots that can storm a burning building to a seven-ton weaponized spyplane invisible to radar

New breeds of winged beasts are lurking in the skies. Bearing names like Reaper, Vulture and Demon, they look nothing like their feathered brethren. Better known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, these strange and wily birds are quietly infiltrating vast swaths of airspace, from battlefields to backyards.

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New Role For Robot Warriors

From ABC News:

Drones Are Just Part of Bid to Automate Combat.

Science fiction sometimes depicts robot soldiers as killing machines without conscience or remorse. But at least one robotics expert today says that someday machines may make the best and most humane decisions on the battlefield.

Guided by virtual emotions, robots could not only make better decisions about their own actions but also act as ethical advisers to human soldiers or even as observers who report back on the battlefield conduct of humans and whether they followed international law.

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My Comment: Another interesting article on the evolving role of unmanned weapons platforms.

New Role For Robot Warriors

Airmen roll out a Predator unmanned aircraft in Indian Springs, Nev. Such aircraft are tightly controlled by remote human operators. Some artificial-intelligence proponents believe next-generation robots could function more autonomously. Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor/File

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Drones are just part of a bid to automate combat. Can virtual ethics make machines decisionmakers?

Science fiction sometimes depicts robot soldiers as killing machines without conscience or remorse. But at least one robotics expert today says that someday machines may make the best and most humane decisions on the battlefield.

Guided by virtual emotions, robots could not only make better decisions about their own actions but also act as ethical advisers to human soldiers or even as observers who report back on the battlefield conduct of humans and whether they followed international law.

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Overwhelmed With Data Feeds, Military Turns To NFL Broadcast Tricks For Highlighting Drone Targets

Analyzing Targets Keeping watch on imagery intelligence.
U.S. Air Force/Tech. Sgt. Erik Gudmundson

From Popular Science:

War is no game, but it could learn a trick or two from football.

A growing swarm of drones keep watch on the battlefield, but military analysts struggle to watch every second of live surveillance footage so that they can quickly pass on warnings about ambushes or possible targets to warfighters. Now the U.S. military has turned to ESPN and Fox Sports to learn how to quickly identify and transmit the video highlights, the New York Times reports.

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Hovering Drone Draws Rave Reviews At CES

An AR. Drone helicoptor at the International Consumer Electronics Show

From AFP:

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — Hovering silently a few feet off the ground it looks like a flying saucer out of a Steven Spielberg film.

But it's no alien device. It's a new toy called the AR.drone from French company Parrot -- a small remote-controlled helicopter which is piloted using an Apple iPhone or an iPod Touch through a Wi-Fi connection.

A demonstration of the miniature helicopter, or quadricopter for its four propellers, drew rave reviews at the opening here of the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) as it flew around the heads of exhibitors and journalists.

The pilot maneuvers the drone using the accelerometer in an iPhone or iPod.

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My Comment: The military applications for this tech are obvious.

Manned And Unmanned Helicopters Most Efficient When Working Together

Flock of Copters Fly, my pretties! U.S. Army/Spc. George Welcome

From Popular Science:

Flying alongside drones might seem a bit strange for U.S. Army chopper pilots, but it has major payoffs. The U.S. Army found that a mixed flight force of manned and unmanned helicopters could locate and kill 90 percent of targets, compared to manned helicopter forces that located just 70 percent of targets, according to DOD Buzz.

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My Comment: This is another reason why unmanned helicopters and UAVs are the big thing in the military .... their kill rate is impressive.

Congressional UAV Caucus Courts Robot Voters

Go Long via Buck McKeon's Flickr

From Popular Science:

The US Congress has well over 100 caucuses, or groups of common interests. They're like the clubs in a high school that play chess or work on the year book, except they usually focus on a constituency like fiscal conservatives or Americans of Asian descent. Well, thanks to California Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon, Congress has a new caucus focused entirely on unmanned aerial vehicles.

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Sky Snake Flexible Blimps Are Bending The Rules On UAV Design

A segmented 76-foot airship during flight testing over Stuttgart, Germany.
(Sanswire-TAO Corp)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

The blimp—that bloated, egg-shaped thing that blocks out the sun at major public events—remains one of aviation’s oddballs. Think Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in the movie Ghostbusters. And it’s a high-maintenance oddball: lots of construction and operating costs relative to the few people it carries. No speed. Huge amounts of hangar space needed to shelter it when nasty weather arrives. How does this thing get work? Other than hoisting cameras above the Super Bowl for 10-second shots during TV commercial breaks, the blimp, or zeppelin as it’s never called anymore, has been a caricature of itself for decades.

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Robotic Planes Capture Detailed Images Of Remote Antarctic

After three stokes of bad luck, the group launches the unmanned aerial vehicle in mission No. 4, a 15-hour trip to Terra Nova Bay and back. Credit:Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science.

From Live Science:

SAN FRANCISCO — Unmanned planes flying over one of the most forbidding regions of Antarctica have captured the first close-up images of the area, where the cold, dense seawater that drives the ocean's circulation is formed.

These unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are proving a boon to scientists who study the frozen regions at Earth's poles, many parts of which simply aren't reachable to humans.

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NASA Predator Scans California Burn Areas

From U.S. News And World Report/AP:

LOS ANGELES—An unmanned NASA Predator aircraft equipped with an infrared imaging sensor has flown over large areas burned by two California wildfires to help the Forest Service assess damage, the administration said Tuesday.

Operating from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, the Predator flew over the 250 square miles burned by this summer's Station Fire in Angeles National Forest and the 57-square-mile area scorched by the 2008 Piute Fire in Sequoia National Forest and other federal land in Kern County.

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Networked Surveillance Minicopters Can't Be Kept Down

From New Scientist:

The helicopter in this video may weigh only 30 grams, but it carries a compass and motion sensors, can change course and warn fellow craft of obstacles it bumps into, and could even carry a small camera. It can also resist what might be called a King Kong attack – if swatted out of the air the tiny craft soon recovers and takes off again.

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Military-Style Drones Set To Patrol Coastline To Spot Drug Smugglers And Illegal Immigrants

Unlike manned police helicopters, which can fly for a maximum of a few hours, the UAS have the capability to stay in the air for up to 15 hours

From The Daily Mail:

Unmanned military-style drones like those used by British troops in Afghanistan could soon be used to help combat illegal immigration and drug smugglers along Britain's coastlines.

The pilotless aircrafts, known as Unmanned Autonomous Systems (UAS), have been used by troops to pinpoint dangers and monitor enemy actions.

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Robotic Spy Planes Go Green

This photo shows the Ion Tiger in flight. The 550-watt fuel cell is show in the box in the lower left corner. Credit: Naval Research Laboratory

From Live Science:

Robot spy planes are harnessing alternative energy to make them more covert and longer lasting than ever.

Such drones could also find use in civilian life to help monitor the earth or wildlife as well, researchers noted.

Increasingly, the military is deploying unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as eyes in the sky to scan the ground for targets and threats, especially for missions that are too dangerous for manned aircraft.

The problem with using internal combustion engines for these spy drones is how noisy they are.

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