The American military does a lot of work in the field of bio-mimicry, stealing designs from nature for use in new technology. After all, if you’re going to design a robot, where better to draw inspiration than from billions of years of evolution? The latest result of these efforts is the GhostSwimmer: The Navy’s underwater drone designed to look and swim like a real fish, and a liability to spook the bejeezus out of any beach goer who’s familiar with Jaws.
Category Archives: Technology
NASA Begins Flight Testing of Shape-Shifting Wings
NASA’s green aviation project, together with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and FlexSys, Inc, is one step closer to demonstrating technology that could make future airliners quieter and more fuel-efficient with the successful flight test of a wing surface that can change shape in flight. Continue reading
Solid-State Flight Recorder for UAS
TL elektronic, based in the Czech Republic has just launched a crash & fire-protected solid-state flight recorder weighing 750 grams (1.65lbs), which is claimed to be the smallest available recorder on the market. Continue reading
SkyCruiser is Part Hybrid Helicopter, Part Personal Jet
Krossblade Aerospace Systems in Arizona envisions a hybrid 5-seat transformer aircraft which can also double as a road vehicle, coming with switchblade wings, six rotors and the ability to work as a VTOL aircraft. Continue reading
Boeing’s New Laser Knocks Out UAS In Rough Weather
Boeing and the U.S. Army have proven the capabilities of the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) in maritime conditions, successfully targeting a variety of aerial targets at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Continue reading
Northrop Grumman Developing XS-1 Experimental Spaceplane Design for DARPA
Northrop Grumman Corporation with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic is developing a preliminary design and flight demonstration plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 programme.
BAE Develops Smart Skin Technology to Detect Damage on Aircraft
Work is underway at BAE Systems to give aircraft human-like ‘skin’, enabling the detection of injury or damage and the ability to ‘feel’ the world around them. Engineers at BAE’s Advanced Technology Centre are investigating a ‘smart skin’ concept which could be embedded with tens of thousands of micro-sensors. When applied to an aircraft, this will enable it to sense wind speed, temperature, physical strain and movement, far more accurately than current sensor technology allows.
Malloy Aeronautics Hoverbike on Kickstarter
An interesting Kickstarter project aims to jump-start sales of a drone version of a fully-functional hover bike. The quadcopter drone acts as a proof of concept for the full-sized manned vehicle, with proceeds from the crowdfunding effort intended to fuel the continued development of the final vehicle. With more than a week remaining before the Kickstarter campaign concludes, its funding goal has been exceeded and development is moving forward at pace. Though the manned Hoverbike is what tends to garner the most attention, the one third scale drones are actually the focus of the Kickstarter effort.