AirMule takes UAS technology to a new dimension

UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) technology comes in all shapes and sizes these days. Although the bigger ones are mostly used by the armed forces for international reconnaissance and in some cases attack, like the Predator B.

A system developed by the Tactical Robotics LTD a subsidiary of the the Urban Aeronautics LTD based in Israel have developed a unique UAS system which due to its VTOL and and high maneuverability, can perform a multitude of tasks and could possibly take the capability of UAS to a totally new level in terms of both civilian and military use.

At first glance it looks something straight from a SciFi action movie. The Aircraft is only slightly larger than the size of a standard Hummer. The biggest advantage for this aircraft are the internal lift rotors (Enclosed in the body) which gives it the benefit of flying in mountainous and urban environments, conventional helicopters or other multirotor platforms have a risk in such environments due to their exposed rotors.

DALER: A drone that's capable of flying and crawling on the ground

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have been doing some remarkable work when it comes to innovation in flying robots.

This time from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), researchers at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems have come up with an innovative concept of a flying platform that can not only fly but even crawl on the ground. The backronym 'DALER' stands for "Deployable Air Land Exploration Robot". Its actually named after the man behind the Project 'Ludovic Daler' a Ph.D candidate.

The project goes by the title 'Adaptive Morphology for Multi-Modal Locomotion' and is aimed at developing robots capable of multiple modes of locomotion. For task such as exploration, search-and-rescue, or monitoring of the environment autonomous or remotely operated robots are the obvious choice. But for these kind of tasks robots may have to deal with complex terrains, such as semi-collapsed buildings, deep caverns, or forests with a lot of vegetation. In general, flying robots are considered  most capable for the purpose. However for exploring areas close to the ground it is found that ground locomotion is more efficient than flying. Hence a robot with both capabilities is suited for the purpose.

Hexacopter and hexapod union looks like a robotic insect

Hexacopter and Hexapod are amongst  the latest and the most popular remote control robotic toys out there. How about combining them together to create a new walking and flying-walking hybrid machine. I bet you never though of that before. That's what the guys at Mad Lab Industries (MLI for short) have come up with. MLI is a  fresh start up that sells robotic components online and on the side they do cool stuff too.

So the basic idea behind this unnamed project is to integrate a remote controlled Hexapod Robot with a remote controlled Hexacopter. With this idea, they received a PhantomX AX Hexapod kit from Trossen Robotics.

The PhantomX AX Hexapod

Now the integration wasn't an easy task, considering the fact that the PhantomX was originally designed to be tough and was quite heavy to be  taken to the air. So it had to undergo a lot of surgery, the frame originally made of ABS plastic parts had to be replaced with lighter carbon fiber parts. Despite the fact, it was still heavy for it to be taken in the air by a quadcopter. Rather it needed a Hexacopter which has a much greater lifting force and was much stable than a quadcopter. A quadcoptor would have been cheaper considering the fact that it would have reduced the cost of 2 BLDC motors and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller).

Lockheed in Collaboration with LaserMotive Tests UAVs With Laser Power Beaming

The quest to transmit power without wires has been something people have been working on since centuries and obviously it not science fiction anymore, people have come up with different ways to transmit power wirelessly. We wrote about Wirticity back in 2010 which gained a lot of media attention back then.

Back in 2009 a Seattle-based company by the name 'LaserMotive' specializing in laser power beaming proved to be the only successful entrant and winner of the NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Challenge. 

The idea of laser power is pretty simple. Just like a photovoltaic cell (solar cell) produces electricity from sun light, Laser power beaming acts in the same way. A powerful laser beam is used to carry energy over distances; this energy in the form of light and heat can be converted into electricity by using photovoltaic cells. This enables to transfer power wirelessly over distances and can be consider a more practical efficient and cost effective way compared to other wireless power transmission methods available. To get into the details you can check out this Laser power beaming fact sheet.

So now that we know about laser power beaming, the idea can be used for a wide variety of applications, only your imagination is the limit. Although there are a lot of safety and efficiency factors involved with makes it difficult to use over existing electric power grid, we wont get into that in this post. You can always leave a question or opinion in the comments.

Now in the modern warfare era of Drones, UAVs and UAS (unmanned ariel systems), endurance is one of the major challenges faced by UAV designers and developers. Battery based UAVs are silent but poor at endurance. Conventional fuel based UAVs have better endurance but they are very noisy and are difficult to use where you require to fly at low altitudes and small areas. So the application of laser power beaming seems to be the best solution.