Most of the UAVs we saw at AUVSI last week were expensive. Really expensive. Like, if you have to ask, don’t ask. This sucks, because UAVs aren’t just useful for people with a defense budget… There’s a sizable civilian market as well, for everything from security to aerial photography to flying around and freaking people out with a little round robot.

The HALO micro air vehicle promises to be simple, reliable, and above all, inexpensive. If it makes it into production in volume, by 2011 you (yes, you) could go by one for somewhere around $2k, which is practically disposable as far as the military is concerned… But let’s call it “expendable” instead. For that, you get a 10 inch diameter UAV that weighs less than a pound, but includes a real-time video surveillance package and autonomous capability. The ducted fan design is something we’ve seen before (on the GoldenEye 80 and the Honeywell MAV, for example), and it means that the HALO is capable of vertical take-offs and landings, stable hovers, and it can operate in enclosed spaces and (hypothetically) bounce right off anything it might accidentally run into.

The advantages of a low-cost UAV can’t be underestimated… It’s not just the fact that one HALO is cheap, but it’s that a bunch of HALOs are also cheap, meaning that you can use a lot of HALOs for the same cost as using a single, more expensive UAV. For example, one scenario that was mentioned to me involved tossing a couple hundred (!) HALOs out of an airplane to form a flexible swarm network providing autonomous, adaptive, real-time surveillance. ‘Course, their batteries only last about 15 minutes a pop, meaning that sooner or later you’ll have a couple hundred HALOs falling out of the sky, but I imagine that a rain of little round UAVs is a highly effective method of confusing the crap out of the enemy.

[ CRG HALO ]

Gareth from Let’s Make Robots has been working on a series of autonomous metal detecting robots, and ThunderBird 007 is his latest and greatest version. The idea is that the robot will, over some unspecified period of time, be entirely self funding, paying for its own components by bringing you back a pile ‘o gold doubloons. In addition to a metal detecting wand, TB-007 has a wireless camera and a laser pointer to show you exactly what it finds, and Gareth is working on determining the “metal signature” of different coins, which would enable the robot to scout out the most valuable finds.

All it needs now is a little scoop and some kind of basket, and you could just set an army of these little guys loose on the beach, kick back, and rake in the bottle caps.

[ Let's Make Robots ]

iRobot’s new Warrior 700, a much bigger and more capable version of the PackBot, was put through its paces at AUVSI’s unmanned systems demo as part of a mock recon and forced entry scenario. The Warrior 700 can carry a PackBot on its back in a cage attached to an arm. When “standing” on its articulating treads and with the arm extended, the PackBot can (with a little careful positioning) be delivered through a window:

The PackBot, controlled by a second operator, has no trouble surviving a fall of several feet. It then rights itself if necessary and goes exploring, while the Warrior acts as pointbot for a squad of humans:

After I took this picture, the Warrior kinda got a little bit stuck on the threshold of the door, and spent about 5 minutes trying to alter its center of gravity to get moving again… It wasn’t exactly a shock and awe entrance. But, it’s way better to have a robot stumble over an enemy doorway than a human, and maybe while the bad guys inside are trying to figure out just what the heck that robot is doing floundering around by the door, the humans can run around the back and take them by surprise. It was, um, all part of the plan.

[ iRobot Warrior 700 ]

As you may or may not have noticed, we’re currently in the process of adding some stuff to the BotJunkie sidebar. You know, that thing over on the right that you’ve probably been busy ignoring up until now. The highlight will be a feed from our Twitter account, which we’ll be using to post links to stuff that’s robot-y, but not quite robot-y enough to make it to BotJunkie. We’re working out some kinks, but everything should be up and running and looking pretty not too long from now.

I hope, anyway.

It should probably bother you, at least little bit, that this is the second robot we’ve posted about that eats people. Unless, that is, you count this one, but supposedly you shouldn’t. In this case, getting eaten by this robot may save your life if you happen to be trapped under an unstable building after an earthquake or something, and the robot is likely to spit you out after it’s all over. Fairly likely. At least, it says it will. Yeah, good luck with that.

VIA [ Pink Tentacle ]

Launching a small unmanned aircraft is pretty easy… All it takes is a little catapult, a slingshot, or in some cases, just a strong arm. Landing a UAV, on the other hand, is not so easy. Winged aircraft have to maintain a fair amount of forward speed to keep from stalling out and plowing into the ground, and that makes precision landings hard to pull off, especially for UAVs that don’t have room for accessories like landing gear, which is bulky, heavy, and useless for 99% of the time.

As you might expect, a variety of different solutions to the issue of landing UAVs have been put forward, and we saw a few of them in action at AUVSI’s unmanned systems demo earlier this week. The first solution is probably the simplest: a controlled crash. The Aerovironment Puma AE UAV returns to a GPS waypoint near the ground, slows down to a stall, and then pancakes into the ground, breaking into pieces which can be easily reassembled.

If you’d rather have your UAV return in one piece, a parachute is a good option. The Aeronautics Defense Systems Orbiter UAV will return to a specified GPS location, make an orbit or two to test out the wind speed and direction, and then slow to a stall and deploy its own little parachute about 100 feet above the ground, to float down to a safe landing.

Sometimes, UAVs need to be landed in one exact spot with no room for error, as on the deck of a moving ship. In the same way that aircraft carriers use arresting cables to catch landing planes, the ScanEagle stops itself with a cable, except in the vertical plane:

The ScanEagle navigates to the cable with such precision (on the order of two centimeters) that it’s actually able to aim to hit the cable with one of its wing roots, close to a titanium hook that catches the cable on impact. It certainly looks violent, but it’s only about a 12g impact, which is less than the 15g catapult that the ScanEagle launches from. The advantage of this system is that it’s capable of reliable, precision landings in a very small footprint, especially suitable for platforms like moving ships.

It’s worth mentioning that none of these methods are really “best.” Rather, each is well adapted to the particular UAV and the situation that the UAVs find themselves in. As dramatic as the cable capture is, my personal favorite is the controlled crash landing of the Puma. It’s simple, straightforward, a testament to the robustness of the UAV, and since you’d just have to disassemble the thing post-flight anyway, it saves you a bit of effort at the same time.

[ Puma AE ]
[ Orbiter ]
[ ScanEagle ]

QinetiQ MAARS

I spent Tuesday on the AUVSI expo floor, talking to people, taking pics, stealing brochures, and pushing buttons that probably weren’t intended to be pushed. As with the pictures from yesterday’s demo, I’ll be posting in more detail about these bots in the next few days, as well as catching up on the last few days of robot news that I’ve neglected while traveling and hoofing it around airport runways and expo booths. I could really use a robot helper or something…

If you have any questions, or if I screwed something up, post in the comments and I’ll get back to you and/or fix it.

American Dynamics AD-150

CRG Halo

More after the break. (Read more…)

Northrop Grumman X-47 Pegasus

I spent yesterday at AUVSI’s unmanned systems demo, watching UAVs watch me and getting horribly sunburned. I’ll be putting together more detailed info on many of these bots in the next few days, but I thought y’all might like to oggle a few pics in the meantime (click on them for bigger versions). If you have any specific questions, post in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

iRobot Warrior 700

BAE Mantis

More, after the jump. (Read more…)

This week, BotJunkie will be covering AUVSI’s Unmanned Systems North America live from Washington DC. Featuring predominantly military hardware, this is the world’s largest exhibition of unmanned systems, and we’re hoping for heaps of awesome robots developed through juicy defense contracts. In addition to a expo hall which we’ll be checking out on Tuesday, Monday features an unmanned systems demonstration at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland, where we’ve been promised operational UAVs and UGVs. We probably won’t be able to post directly from the event, but (if possible) we’ll be updating our Twitter feed with images and stuff throughout the day. The demos kick off at 10am EST, and hopefully we’ll be bringing back tons of pics and video. Here’s some sample footage from the 2008 event:

Stay tuned!

[ AUVSI Unmanned Systems North America ]

These innovative rescue robots are competing in a rescue robot contest in Japan. As far as I can make out, the objective is to navigate a simulated earthquake disaster zone (via what looks to be remote control), locate a fake kid under a pile of debris, remove the debris, and then somehow get the kid to safety. This last bit is the most interesting, with the robots demonstrating all kinds of different ways of picking up the fake kid, from the reliable (but boring) arm/ramp method to giant plastic scoop things to a cute little deployable grabber bot. And of course, all of this is made infinitely more awesome by the cartoon opening.

If this footage tickles your fancy, there’s a longer version of the same vid on YouTube… It’s got a lot of non-robot stuff in it, but there’s some extended fake kid rescue scenes that are worth a look starting at about 4 minutes in. There now, doesn’t all this just make you feel so much better about earthquakes? I’m actually looking forward to it, now that there are so many robots that can come rescue me.

[ Rescue Robots (Translated) ] VIA [ Robot Watch (Translated) ]