Researchers create world's smallest, open source drone

Academics in the Netherlands claim they have designed and built the world’s smallest autopilot system for drones.

At four square centimetres, the open source Lisa/S chip (Lost Illusions Serendipitous Autopilot/Small) that the autopilot system runs off is roughly the same size as a €1 coin. Despite its small size, the 1.9g piece of silicon contains everything required to fly a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) without human interaction.

Project leader Bart Remes told Techworld that the biggest challenge with Lisa/S, which is 30 grams lighter than its predecessor, was getting everything to fit onto a 2x2 cm board.

  “The overall strategy of our MAV lab is to make everything small, light and electrically efficient,” said Remes. “If the autopilot is smaller and more efficient you can fly longer or carry more payload.”

The chip's software is based on Paparazzi, a free open source drone autopilot system that's existed since 2003 and is available to everyone.

Remes said he chose to make Lisa/S open source because he wants MAVs to become as popular as mobile phones. “The best way to achieve this is making it available for the public so they can come up with the killer application,” he said in reference to the decision.

“Now the community can test it in much more test environments than we can do here in the lab,” said Remes. “They let us know when an issue arises and help us to solve it.  Thanks to the community the open source autopilots are safer than closed source autopilots.”

Drones have traditionally been largely confined to the military but the team hopes that civil drone applications will become more common and used in everything from agriculture to search and rescue.

“More and more farmers are using drones for monitoring their crops,” said Remes. “It is a way to save money because they only spray fertiliser on the crops that need it, by looking at the data coming from the drone's multi spectrum camera.”

The Lisa/S will compete in the International MAV competition next month.

Drone show attendees flock to new $700 model

3D Robotics gave a sneak preview of a comparatively cheap consumer drone at an unmanned aircraft convention in San Francisco this week.

The company's new quadcopter, or four-rotor helicopter, can be controlled from a tablet running an Android flight system or other similar app. The as-yet-unnamed drone will cost about US$700 and is aimed at an audience of hobbyists, even wedding photographers, who could attach a camera to the front and get sweeping shots from the sky.

You can see an IDG News Service video of 3D Robotics engineers flying two drones here.

"I think the bigger market is people who just want to do stuff, regular people like you or I," said Brandon Basso, a research and development engineer at 3D Robotics.

Some people attending the conference were there to learn how to implement drones for search and rescue.

"I'm not saying that a person can be replaced in the cockpit yet, but you can fly some of these (drone) missions at about a tenth of the cost, and you can fly them in weather where a human pilot wouldn't be out," said Colin Loring, a volunteer search and rescue pilot from Greenville, S.C. He intends to buy a drone for his group within a few months.

Larger commercial-sized drones were displayed but not flown at the convention. Drone maker MLB brought its V-Bat UAV vertical take-off and landing drone, as well as the Super Bat, which is made of Kevlar and has cameras with target tracking and 20X zoom lenses. Prices for those drones start around $120,000.

A national drone convention is slated for Aug. 12-15 in Washington, D.C. The California event's organizers say it's possible that the D.C. meeting will have protestors demonstrating outside against military applications of drones.

Navies Use Undersea Drone as a Sub Warfare Training Target

 

 

Saab — yes, Saab — has built an amphibious drone meant to keep submarine crews on their toes.

 

The Saab AUV62 is a highly sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicle that mimics a submarine, allowing navies to train for anti-submarine warfare as realistically as possible without blowing up expensive submarines.

 

Though it’s an unmanned vehicle, the AUV62's unique acoustic payload means it will show up on sonar screens as an enemy sub. It’s essentially the underwater equivalent of skeet shooting, except with torpedoes.

 

According to Saab, the battery-powered AUV62 can either be preprogrammed to follow a particular underwater route, using collision detection to avoid other vessels, or a remote operator can control it using either a radio or acoustic link. It can travel at speeds as fast as 20 knots, and it can descend to more than 1,640 feet below the surface. It’s possible to launch the AUV62 from the shore, from a submarine, or from a ship — as shown above.

 

Though several military customers have already ordered AUV62s for anti-submarine target practice, the undersea Saab has abilities other than getting blasted out of the water during training missions. Depending on how it’s configured, it can be used for minesweeping and reconnaissance. The Swedish military has already deployed the AUV62 for such purposes.

 

Fans of the SPG and 9-3 Viggen who panicked at the sight of “Saab” and “torpedo” in the same sentence need not worry: Nobody went all Vampire Weekend on a classic 900. Saab’s automotive division split from Saab Group in 1990, and the company’s defense and aircraft businesses are still going strong.