Lockheed Martin is also a non-capitalist enterprise. They are completely funded by the U.S Government, and they have the most ethics violations of any corporation on planet earth. Cluster bombs, green washing, nuclear missles, lobbying violations.
Billions seems unlikely. 450k enlisted men, 100k total force in Afghanistan. Let's guess the Army will want 250,000 of them. You'd need to sell them for $4k each to get that first billion dollars.
Sure, you can sell the first few for more than that during testing, you have to recover the cost of the documentation and supporting materials the army will require plus pay all the people you hire to interface with their counterparts, but ultimately I think you'll end up in the $1k neighborhood and still be making a huge per unit profit. ($200 would be a nice price for the consumer version. Maybe more depending on how nice a camera you put on it.)
(I assume the soldier will already be carrying a suitable display.)
If you add the infrastructure needed to live combine the video feeds of say 1000 units into a coherent view, available to each of those units and their commanders, but not to the enemy, things can get expensive.
Having said that the combination of 'finger-sized' and outdoor operations will be quite a challenge. Even moderate wind will be a problem.
"Notice how stable it hovers. This exploits the natural stability of maple seeds" (erm.. I tried to quote as good as possible).
And it seems to reduce the complexity of the device itself a lot. One motor. One wing. I looked at it and thought "Wow! What a great and 'simple' (as in reduced) idea".
I read that too. I just don't believe it. I think a two wing version with the same dihedral angle would be just as stable. Their design might eliminate the "complexity" of one motor though maybe they can do two wings and one motor. Unclear whether the difficulty in controlling it (which they also mention) is worth the tradeoff. There is the gee whiz factor though.
I think the complexity in controlling it is due to the fact that the whole craft is rotating (where's the front..?). If you want to remove that complexity, you need to add a lot more than just another wing and add a number of mechanical parts that can fail. As it is right now, the whole complexity is the software (which should be safely stored).
In addition, this design lends itself to small sizes in a great way. Shrink the center parts/electronics/, shrink the single wing and you get a very, very compact tool. Another wing nearly doubles the length of the whole thing.
The other wing would fold next to the first wing. Since there would be more wing area, the first wing could be made smaller. Not necessarily any additional moving parts needed.
That's a problem for the software. Divided over the number of proposed units, the development cost is about zero. The mass of the zeros and ones is also nearly zero.
What it saves is moving parts, actuators, and driver circuits, all of which have a mass and cost per unit.
!!! I make a guess on how it operates here, I think it's good, but don't take it as gospel !!!
I didn't see it spelled out, but I theorize what they do is modulate the thrust of the single motor by the wing's rotational position to tip the entire object causing it to trade some vertical thrust into lateral thrust. Given that they already had to have a micro controller and a variable speed motor driver for the motor, the incremental cost in mass and dollars is zero.
They didn't make it clear in the interview if they'd solved the imaging problem or not yet. How do you get usable video (or stills) back from a camera that's rotating constantly - and potentially, erratically.
In the second video, they said they'd solved it, though not how, nor was any imagery shown.
Counter-rotating the image, synced to the rotational speed of the device, would seem to be a simple solution, provided the camera was centered i.e. it wasn't constantly panning.
Even if it was (e.g. mounted on the fastest-moving outer edge of the wing), software could reconstruct a panoramic view. You don't even need to align images from subsequent rotations, if you know what direction it is pointed. You'd get fps related to RPM though.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 75.7 ms ] threadWell, no shit.
Sure, you can sell the first few for more than that during testing, you have to recover the cost of the documentation and supporting materials the army will require plus pay all the people you hire to interface with their counterparts, but ultimately I think you'll end up in the $1k neighborhood and still be making a huge per unit profit. ($200 would be a nice price for the consumer version. Maybe more depending on how nice a camera you put on it.)
(I assume the soldier will already be carrying a suitable display.)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004A8ZRB0/ref=as_li_qf_sp_...
Having said that the combination of 'finger-sized' and outdoor operations will be quite a challenge. Even moderate wind will be a problem.
And it seems to reduce the complexity of the device itself a lot. One motor. One wing. I looked at it and thought "Wow! What a great and 'simple' (as in reduced) idea".
It's pretty much impossible fly fixed wing UAVs indoors. This concept is pretty amazing.
In addition, this design lends itself to small sizes in a great way. Shrink the center parts/electronics/, shrink the single wing and you get a very, very compact tool. Another wing nearly doubles the length of the whole thing.
That's a problem for the software. Divided over the number of proposed units, the development cost is about zero. The mass of the zeros and ones is also nearly zero.
What it saves is moving parts, actuators, and driver circuits, all of which have a mass and cost per unit.
!!! I make a guess on how it operates here, I think it's good, but don't take it as gospel !!!
I didn't see it spelled out, but I theorize what they do is modulate the thrust of the single motor by the wing's rotational position to tip the entire object causing it to trade some vertical thrust into lateral thrust. Given that they already had to have a micro controller and a variable speed motor driver for the motor, the incremental cost in mass and dollars is zero.
Counter-rotating the image, synced to the rotational speed of the device, would seem to be a simple solution, provided the camera was centered i.e. it wasn't constantly panning.
Even if it was (e.g. mounted on the fastest-moving outer edge of the wing), software could reconstruct a panoramic view. You don't even need to align images from subsequent rotations, if you know what direction it is pointed. You'd get fps related to RPM though.
bottom-right corner of their homepage: http://www.avinc.com/