James Cameron’s Avatar opens this week, with trailers featuring some funny-looking aircraft that resemble helicopters, but with ducted fans instead of the traditional rotor blades. While there are no full-size aircraft employing this technology, it’s already in use on small unmanned drones. And it has distinct advantages over the older approach.

Last month, an Australian company, Cyber Technology (WA) Pty Ltd, used a drone with ducted fans in an actual operation. Their Cyber Quad vertical take-off drone carried out an extended survey of an offshore drilling platform and an oil rig damaged by fire. The drone flew around, under and inside the two structures, which are joined by a gantry, as well as landing on them for a better look.

“The ability to land the CyberQuad on the various levels of the platform where the main damage occurred gave engineers and disaster control experts the ability to see the extent of the structural damage visually,” Andrea James, head of Communications at Cyber Technology told Danger Room.

The Cyber Quad can carry a high-definition video camera or sensors to detect specific gases, like industrial pollutants or chemical warfare agents. The brushless electric motor is quiet and does not produce sparks – important when investigating a damaged oil platform. Top speed is around 40 mph with a mission time of 35 minutes. But this can be extended to some hours, because the drone is able to “perch” on various landing points, and look around from there.

“The UAV pilot was able to land and move about on different levels, aiming the camera to get unique and vital viewpoints of the rig structures. This was not achievable using high definition devices from manned helicopters or boats,” said James.

There are plenty of quad-rotor electric craft out there which claim similar capabilities, like the DraganFlyer , Swarm Systems’ Owl , not to mention Air Robot’s AR100B, now used by the British police. According to the makers of the stealthy AR100B, it ” can fly silently through the air or hover while transmitting live images to the operator at the ground station… The unit can also ‘perch and stare’ from a solid platform allowing the operator to capture hours of footage from an out of view vantage point.”

You could see the perching craft as simply another type of unmanned aerial aircraft, or UAV. But another approach is to think of perching drones as unattended ground sensors capable of relocating themselves. A large number could be air-dropped over an area of operations (for example, ahead of a convoy) to find suitable perches. Their views could then be fed into a suitable video-sharing system so they are available to local commanders. And afterwards they can fly back to base or rendezvous with a drone “mothership.”

“Staring” in this context need not mean visual sensing. Perching UAVs would be an effective way of covering the battlefield with sensors for acoustic gunshot detection, which can locate the source of a shot from the sound. With several widely-spaced sensors, such a system could pinpoint shooters over a wide area. The “Perch and stare” observer then becomes a “perch and listen” lifesaver. That’s a piece of kit even James Cameron doesn’t have yet.

Source: Wired
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/200...
By David Hambling
December 17, 2009
9:17 am

New design opens up the skies for unmanned aircraft… Australia is set to become the launching pad for futuristic flying vehicles, as the research successes of a young science and engineering graduate herald a breakthrough in cyber technology.

Speaking at Curtin University’s launch of the iNexus Australia Robotics Competition 2009, Cyber Technology Flight Control Systems Engineer and mechatronic engineering graduate Josh Portlock discussed his advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), which have seen his designs garner keen interest from defence specialists and utility providers.

Mr Portlock’s most recent project, the ’CyberQuad’ combines state-of-the-art vertical take-off and landing technologies with the mechanical simplicity and agility of a quadrotor, and the safety and efficiency of ducted fans.

Mr Portlock says after joining a commercial enterprise, he developed a keen sense for applying his academic research to real world applications.

"While I was in industry, I started specialising more in multi disciplinary design optimisation, which is the idea of optimising vehicles using multidisciplinary design to fit a specific requirement.

"My private research success demonstrated my UAV could, for example, carry a 10-mega pixel still camera, fly up in a very short response time and take high resolution photos of power lines, as an example of an application.

"It currently costs Western Power $1200 per pole to have a manned helicopter to take those photos. So if you imagine how much electricity my UAV uses compared to the fuel required to send a helicopter, it makes the UAV far more economically viable as well as being more environmentally safe and reduces the safety risk for pilots flying close to power lines."

Mr Portlock first began developing UAV’s in 2005, with an opened quad-rotor helicopter, motivated by a keen interest in electric propulsion and electric vehicles, which he says are less of a safety hazard for operators and the environment.

His initial post-graduate research was into other multi rotor helicopters, before being offered an industry position to commercialise his work.

"In my private research I developed ducted quad-rotors, moving from the open quad-rotors, realising the importance of the compact safety and efficiency that ducts can give. The more I looked in to it, I realised no one had actually combined those technologies," he says.

"The unique thing about this project was the altitude control system allowing it to self-level." When Mr Portlock joined Cyber Technology in late 2008, the company had an impressive core portfolio of UAV’s, including the Cyber-Eye, a medium altitude long endurance fixed point aircraft, good for long term surveillance and the CyBIrd, a hi speed jet used for targeting applications. Cyber Technology also had the CyberShark for hovering missions or reconnaissance.

"They had the high speed, the long endurance and the big all rounder, but what they didn’t have was the compact, safe, efficient, more nimble more affordable UAV platform," he says. Mr Portlock says recent advances in inertial sensor technology has given researchers the ability to control unstable dynamics which has resulted in a surge in open propeller quadrotor helicopters development over the last decade.

Source: Science WA
http://www.fastthinking.com.au/news...