I remember once watching a bird in the distance through my binoculars and then how it inexplicably vanished into the distance, seemingly at great speed, not really flapping its wings. Seemed interesting, but I don’t go birdwatching enough to rule out my inexperience in looking at them properly. Maybe the binoculars had given me mild vertigo.
It won’t go further than a headline, never a practical one. The biggest issue remains (after solving the other two) in drones now is endurance, and unless a breakthrough battery technology changes that, all these cool concepts will never materialize.
What is that, technically speaking? Last year I was working for a company that inspects pipelines with drones. They automated land, recharge, on pedestals placed along a route.
> The O1 drone weighs 1 pound and can fly up to 10 kilometers, which is a little more than 6 miles, for over an hour, according to a company fact sheet.
Yes I did, I even built similar ones before, and an hour is barely a number in real scenarios or BVLOS (add preflight post flight check, etc), plus, when you add the connectivity part (anything to allow bvlos) or pro payloads that one hour becomes 10min unless you go fuel. Robotic world has alot of over hype monkey business, don’t trust any “fact” sheet. There’s a reason why balloons are used in some part of the world to carry these drones for long distance.
Gliding takes no energy, but it requires many sensors and a very clever control program. I do no think that anyone has built a drone capable of long-term gliding, yet (i.e. capable to recognize thermal currents and use them for ascending and also capable of gliding a long time without losing much altitude).
Nonetheless, it should possible for a flapping-wing drone to do some short-time gliding between intervals when it uses wing flapping to ascend to the initial height, in order to save some energy.
This is the size and sort of drones a unit would use for scouting the local area. The range isn't great, but it is suitable for that and less conspicuous than the gas-powered drones used 15 or so years ago and the buzzing quadcopters of today.
I think battery life is a key limiter for this technology but how much time does it need? Something so small that can fly for fifteen minutes to collect intelligence et. al. might be sufficient. For example: a situation in which it is not safe to enter and detection would make it even less safe, ergo using something so tiny for only a few minutes could give valuable feedback to the user.
I think that endurance is an intrinsic limitation of drones, but I take the opposite conclusion as you. Instead of it meaning drones will never catch on, it'll mean that military missions and consequently the size and structure of the state will adjust their form to suit what drones are good at, rather than drones not catching on. In other words, we'll get drones, but we'll lose nation-states, rather than keeping nation-states but having them fail to adopt drones.
Drones' ability to absolutely dominate the battlefield inside of ~200km is just too powerful. You'll end up with small regional powers that are basically impregnable to invasion, but also can't project power because the range of drones is too short. City-states, basically. And because the defining characteristic of a state is its monopoly on physical force, the structure of the state will adapt to the dominant military technology of the time.
I am not so sure about that, before the whole weaponization of these drones, drone delivery was the hot topic, then changed to “last mile” delivery when dreams hit reality checks, then the whole “urban mobility” with all the connectivity and drones infra to land and take off, rally points, etc etc, and nothing really changed, connectivity is still a challenge, although there are plenty of work arounds (I am even building a platform that will solve a lot of nowadays drones flight issues), but the endurance? Nope, I remember we always hit this as the biggest showstopper in any mission, especially when these missions usually fly with no infra be it cellular or anything that could charge it. The only solution is scientists find a way to make lightweight high endurance batteries.
In addition to that birds don't tend to emit much RF. And spectroscopy of the visible light from the materials comprising the body should be quite different unless the drones are covered in harvested genuine feathers.
Probably, but only due to sheer laziness. It should be easy to distinguish electronics from birds at sufficiently close range. Plus I'm certain the physical behavior doesn't hold up to close scrutiny.
I wonder if falconry can fill that detection gap. Trained birds are already used to manage wild bird populations at airports. Now time to stop fake birds.
I read somewhere that the French government was training golden eagles to attack drones. I've been out fishing and when I had a bite on my line a couple of eagles flew half a KM from a nearby bluff to come check out if I had snacks for them, birds are all about the snacks!
I'm assuming the real birds would be way more expensive and at high risk of enemy actions against them. A bird bomb smaller than a shotgun shell would be enough to take the bird down if you're suiciding the drone.
Fascinated with ornithopters—probably since reading "Dune", 45 or so years ago as a teenager.
(I may have been fascinated beforehand though—I had a small wind-up one as a kid.)
Kazuhiko Kakuta has a small YouTube channel where he experiments with ornithopter builds (and ornithopter adjacent craft): https://www.youtube.com/@BZH07614/videos
Instead of a full flapping wing thopter I wonder if something prop driven but with moving wings (for show, not propulsion) would be good enough for distant recon. Basically it would look like an RC plane with transparent plastic wings for lift and painted porous flapping wings underneath.
It’s possible, but it would look unnatural to the human eye - you could introduce variable motor speeds to try and mimic bird behaviour when flying in different directions and approaches but from my rabbit holing on the topic I’ve found effort required to get something similar but still not perfect would likely outweigh the effort required to just build it properly.
A lot of radar drone detection is looking for the Doppler signature of the prop. You'd need to use a shrouded edf but then flight times fall off a cliff
2052, Somewhere in the Northern Atlantic. Shipmate Hendricks cant believe his eyes. He seems to have seen something nobody has seen for decades now. After the US-China war - when every drone, spacelaser and soldier was aimed at every last bird on earth in fear of it being an enemy drone - nobody thought there were any left alive. But out here right there in his visor he sees them clear as day, flying around this small rock in the sea without a care in the world. He hurries to the outboat, sets off towards the island, trying to get a picture with his phone the closer he comes. He struggles to get them in focus as the birds start to fly towards him. A quiet "pop" is all thats heard as Hendricks tumbles to the floor. Lying there, blood pooling around him, his phone now showing the picture he took, finally in focus - clearly showing the motors and metal wings of the drones...
Meet Petty Officer Thomas Hendricks. Twenty-six years old. A sailor by profession, a romantic by temperament, and, quite unbeknownst to himself, a man about to make a discovery of considerable scientific importance.
The place: a small island in the North Atlantic. The time: an age in which mankind has grown rather accustomed to the absence of certain things.
But Mr. Hendricks has just spotted something that ought not to be there. And he intends to investigate.
A brief excursion into natural history, with an unscheduled stop... in the Twilight Zone.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 60.9 ms ] thread> The O1 drone weighs 1 pound and can fly up to 10 kilometers, which is a little more than 6 miles, for over an hour, according to a company fact sheet.
Until they present a much more specific claim (and preferably also supporting evidence) the prevailing assumption is that it's exaggerated bullshit.
Nonetheless, it should possible for a flapping-wing drone to do some short-time gliding between intervals when it uses wing flapping to ascend to the initial height, in order to save some energy.
Drones' ability to absolutely dominate the battlefield inside of ~200km is just too powerful. You'll end up with small regional powers that are basically impregnable to invasion, but also can't project power because the range of drones is too short. City-states, basically. And because the defining characteristic of a state is its monopoly on physical force, the structure of the state will adapt to the dominant military technology of the time.
It's not that all birds aren't real.
But some birds definitely aren't real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real
Explain what I ate at Chick-Fil-A :o)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_AQUILINE
(I may have been fascinated beforehand though—I had a small wind-up one as a kid.)
Kazuhiko Kakuta has a small YouTube channel where he experiments with ornithopter builds (and ornithopter adjacent craft): https://www.youtube.com/@BZH07614/videos
Would maybe make a decent twilight zone clip.
Meet Petty Officer Thomas Hendricks. Twenty-six years old. A sailor by profession, a romantic by temperament, and, quite unbeknownst to himself, a man about to make a discovery of considerable scientific importance.
The place: a small island in the North Atlantic. The time: an age in which mankind has grown rather accustomed to the absence of certain things.
But Mr. Hendricks has just spotted something that ought not to be there. And he intends to investigate.
A brief excursion into natural history, with an unscheduled stop... in the Twilight Zone.