Day: July 27, 2015

UAS-In-A-Box Adapts to Various Missions

When you leave your base for the field and plan to use a long-range drone, you pack a long-range drone. It will have characteristics of a UAV designed for long, continuous flight and will be able to stay up for a while. However, it will have the maneuverability of a bucket of gravel. What if your mission parameters change in mid-stream, and you need a drone with way more pep, agility, and a smaller girth? […]

Micro-Drone Rolls, Flies, Gathers Intel

Although this looks like a toy called the “Sky Walker”, this drone is far from it. The Applicant, l’INSTITUT SUPERIEUR DE L’AERONAUTIQUE ET DE L’ESPACE, funded by the French Ministry of Defense, has invented a little drone to gather recon inside buildings. It was built as a “multi-mission microscale aerial vehicle. It comprises elements allowing a microscale aerial vehicle to move or roll across a surface, in particular on the ground, and making it capable […]

When Pigs Fly – NOWs Replace SOWs and COWs

Notwithstanding our technological prowess, Mother Nature has a sinister sense of humor, and stuff happens beyond our control. When disaster strikes, it is crucial to establish a communication grid as quickly and efficiently as possible. Bandwidth-hungry networks help coordinate search and rescue, law enforcement and recovery personnel. Sure, there exist “cellular on wheels” (COWs) and “system on wheels” (SOWs), which are carted on trucks into hotspots, but what if there are no roads, or personnel […]