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.

Venezuela offers asylum to NSA source Edward Snowden

Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro has offered to give asylum to Edward Snowden, the former contractor of the National Security Agency who leaked documents about the agency's surveillance programs.

Maduro said in a televised speech on Friday that his country would give "humanitarian asylum."

Neighboring Nicaragua has also said it is considering offering Snowden asylum if circumstances permit, according to reports.

But there are questions as to how he will get to Venezuela. Earlier this week, a plane carrying Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, was denied permission to enter airspace over some European countries as it was returning to Bolivia from Moscow. The countries had apparently been informed that Snowden was on board and their refusal to handle the aircraft sparked protests in Bolivia and the strong complaints from the Bolivian government.

Whistle-blower site WikiLeaks, which has handled Snowden's other asylum requests, said on Friday that asylum requests have been sent to six other countries, but their names were being withheld "due to attempted U.S. interference."

Earlier in the week it said that applications for asylum or asylum assistance were submitted on behalf of Snowden to about 20 countries including Venezuela and Nicaragua through an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow. Snowden is thought to be in the transit facility of the airport, unable to enter Russia after the U.S. revoked his passport.

The American government has filed charges against Snowden in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia for theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.

A bill introduced Thursday by members of the Icelandic Parliament seeks to grant Icelandic citizenship to Snowden, but it won't be discussed until September after the house refused to take it up on the last day of the summer session of the Parliament.

"I have to announce that Snowden will not be getting any form of shelter in Iceland because the current government doesn't even have enough spine for the parliament to discuss Snowden´s request," wrote Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Pirate Party, in a blog post on Friday.

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