Solar Plane Smashes Flight Endurance Record
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Robotic Sentries to Descend on British Town In Contest
In the U.S. we have DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which hosts regular challenges for things like cars that can race around cities sans drivers. The closest U.K. equivalent is the Ministry of Defense Grand Challenge, which tasks teams of engineers to come up with solutions to provide enhanced intelligence to troops on the ground. Competitors for that challenge are set to invade a sleepy British village next month with autonomous flying robots and other cool bits of tech.
Competitors will be tasked with having their automated sentries automatically survey the terrain to "detect, identify, monitor and report the position of a wide range of threats" according to the challenge Web site. Teams will be scored based on the number of threats identified, but will have points detracted if they need to resort to manual control of their devices. Six teams have signed up to compete. Some teams are relying exclusively on aerial bots, while others will use a combination of ground-based rovers and flying sentries to find threats. It sounds like it should be a fun show, and we can't wait for the consumer toy versions to be released. [Source: News.com]
Emission-Free Jet
The Hyfish, a hydrogen fuel-cell powered unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), made its maiden flight over Switzerland recently. The small jet hit a top speed of 200 kph (roughly 124 mph) and even managed some acrobatic maneuvers. Right now the craft is merely a prototype, but we're sure to see a military application in the near future, especially with the engineers claiming that 15-30 hour flights are within reach.
With Earth Day quickly approaching, it's also worth noting that hydrogen fuel-cells are a zero emission technology -- meaning they release no pollution or green house gases. If this technology is successfully scaled to commercial airliners, it would have an immensely positive effect: Aviation is attributed with being responsible for 4-9% of the human impact on global climate change.
from Engadget
With Earth Day quickly approaching, it's also worth noting that hydrogen fuel-cells are a zero emission technology -- meaning they release no pollution or green house gases. If this technology is successfully scaled to commercial airliners, it would have an immensely positive effect: Aviation is attributed with being responsible for 4-9% of the human impact on global climate change.
from Engadget
Have Hovercraft, Won't Travel
While the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense passed on the device, our own U.S. Army has apparently shown plenty of interest. Meanwhile, inventor Hatton suggests a range of domestic uses, from search and rescue to crop investigation. Might we suggest high-tech piñata?
From Engadget (via Daily Mail)
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