Irish UAV Gets Lost, Tries To Make It Home From Africa, Fails

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 16 of January , 2009 at 12:43 am

A poor little Irish Orbiter UAV got lost somewhere over Chad on December 29th… The UAV was programmed to return to base if it lost contact with its operator, but this particular drone still had the GPS coordinates of its base in Ireland in its memory. The drone valiantly headed northwest towards home but crashed in the desert about 4,800 miles short. Sad.

The Orbiter drone is made in Israel; it has a 2.2 meter wingspan and weighs about 14 pounds. It’s got a color video camera with a 10x zoom and is controllable with a handheld unit by a single operator from up to 15 km away.

[ Strategy Page ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

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Category: Artificial Intelligence, Military

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