Continuing the review of contestants in the DARPA UAVForge Challenge – a contest to use crowd-sourcing to build small UAS through an exchange of ideas and design practices – this video presents the Falcon.
The Falcon is a camo-printed, modular three-part aircraft equipped with a super-camera that moves “like the head of a bird of prey.” With thrust vector control, it’s able to carry out a vertical takeoff, and then switch to horizontal flight. It claims to have a battery that’s part of its lifting surface — as opposed to dead weight.
The goal of the Challenge is to build and test a user-intuitive, backpack-portable UAS that can quietly fly in and out of critical environments to conduct sustained surveillance for up to three hours.
Sources: YouTube, Wired Danger Room