Tag: HELICOPTER

Share When two Navy helicopters unexpectedly landed at Lake Tahoe Airport on September 13th, they did so with half a million dollars in damages. Even more unexpected, an ensuing Navy investigation has found that the damage was caused by the crafts' two pilots and their decision to hover just above the surface of Lake Tahoe -- so that they could post the pictures to Facebook, no less. (Did we ...

As part of a DARPA initiative, Boeing is developing a search-and-rescue aircraft that combines a helicopter's hovering capabilities with an airplane's long flight range. According to Aviation Week, Boeing will test a 20-percent scale model of the disc-rotor aircraft, called the CSAR DiscRotor, in a wind tunnel sometime next year. The aircraft uses rotor-mounted blades, much like a chopper, so ...

A 19-year-old California resident was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison yesterday for aiming a laser pointer at a CHP helicopter, according to the Los Angeles Times. Nathan Ramon Wells was arrested last year for diverting the police aircraft as it was in the course of investigating a residential burglary. He pleaded guilty to the incident in September. Flying at 700 feet, the pilots ...

The Web is teeming with the unrealized ideas of both students and established designers who set out to produce astonishing renderings and prototypes for unusual products. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time, money, or technology, many of those products never move from the planning stages to the mass market. But that doesn't mean we can't salivate over their creations, nevertheless. The ...

Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. We've been watching the University of Pennsylvania's quadrotor autonomous helicopter project for the past few months with increasing levels of dread. Now, the terrifying thing has learned to fly through thrown hoops. [From: YouTube] Steve Martin, wild and crazy guy, has joined ...

When demonstrating innovative concepts in robotics, engineers are inevitably subjected to a good-natured Skynet-ribbing about contributing to the wholesale extinction of the human race. It really doesn't help the scientists' cause, though, when language like "precise aggressive maneuvers" is used to describe an autonomous and intimidating flying object -- particularly one with deadly, twirling ...

There's a load of great tech news happening out there every day, and, unfortunately, we just can't cover it all. Here are a few of the other noteworthy things we saw today on our never-ending journey through the wild, wild Web. Just when we thought the ChatRoulette mashup well had gone dry, Paz Bernstein recorded himself painting ChatRoulette users and posted the result, 'ChatRoulette Speed ...

According to Wired, a new U.S. Army aircraft takes the best elements of helicopters, drones and snipers, and wraps them into one package. Dubbed the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System (ARSS), it's an unmanned Vigilante helicopter with a high-powered sniper rifle mounted onto a highly stabilized turret. Originally, the ARSS was designed for urban warfare, since it can hover down small streets ...

A "routine test flight" for a U.S. Navy Fire Scout helicopter drone recently turned into three hours of surveillance and a successful drug bust. According to Popular Science, the MQ-8B Vertical Take-off and Landing UAV (VTUAV) drone caught a boat suspected of carrying cocaine on its radar. With the aid of the remote surveillance, the USS McInerney and U.S. Coast Guard vessels were able to close ...

In the Netherlands, the sale of marijuana is legal, albeit restricted, but the nation is still engaged in a cannabis drug war. According to Dvice, 90-percent of the marijuana grown on local Dutch farms is sold illegally through smugglers and foreign drug traffickers. To help combat the unsanctioned reefer madness, Dutch police have added a new unmanned helicopter, dubbed the 'Canna Chopper,' ...

If you're the sort who's into scoring headshots in your video gaming adventures, chances are you've become quite friendly with the Xbox 360's weapon of choice: the gray and white controller. Its two analog sticks, directional-pad, and dozen-or-so buttons let you drive high-powered race cars or fire high-powered rifles with easy precision. In an extreme case of life imitating game, it's now being ...

Tiny model remote-control (RC) helicopters that fit in the palm of your hand are hugely popular right now, appearing on shelves at nearly every kind of store you can think of and generally selling for $20 or less. However, they are just cheap, miniaturized versions of more serious model helicopters that are larger, heavier, and, as a man in Hong Kong recently discovered, much more dangerous. Lo ...

What's more high tech than a helicopter that flies itself? A robot helicopter that teaches itself to fly ... itself. Scientists at Stanford University have created exactly that, unveiling their autonomous helicopter on Monday. The four-foot long aircraft, which learned by watching other helicopters fly, performed "flips, rolls, pirouettes, stall-turns, knife-edges, and an inverted hover over a ...

We all know the dream of the practical flying car hasn't exactly come to fruition, despite a few one-off prototypes showing some level of promise. And, while jet wing backpacks look like fun, they seem a little too extreme for most. So, perhaps our future transportation needs really lie in backpack helicopters like the GEN H-4, a personal copter set to be flown over the birthplace of Leonardo ...

Reports of an aircraft crash usually result in news reports expressing doubts about travel by air, investigations into the cause of the crash, and, of course, questions regarding whether the crash could have been prevented. But what do you do if you're a news outlet and everyone else has already covered those obvious angles to the point of tedium? Easy: You find some completely unrelated detail ...