Update: Lockheed Martin Samarai

Writing by Evan Ackerman on Monday, 31 of May , 2010 at 3:25 am

A couple weeks ago, we posted a new video from Lockheed Martin featuring their badass Samarai NAV. We weren’t entirely clear on the status of the project, since the continuation phase of the DARPA contract for which the SAMARAI was originally developed was awarded to AeroVironment for their hummingbird robot.

So, we asked Lockheed Martin.

Kingsley Fregene, principal investigator for the Samarai program at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories, answered our questions.

-What’s the current status of the Samarai project?

Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Laboratories (ATL) is currently designing and prototyping a family of mono-wing vehicles as part of our Samarai program. There are currently two versions built, a 30 inch flyer and a 12 inch flyer, and both are roughly the same design. The larger version completed flight tests, flying both autonomous and human-guided flights, last year and helped collect valuable information used to design the smaller version. The smaller version took flight for the first time in late 2009 and is currently still in flight test, it is also flying both operator guided and autonomous modes.

-What made Lockheed decide to continue the project after not being awarded the DARPA contract?

Our team completed Phase 1 of DARPA’s Nano Air Vehicle (NAV) Program and we did not move on to Phase II. Our leadership and program team looked at the research completed during the NAV program as well the future research and development plans and decided to extend the program through internal research. Since then, the team has furthered their work significantly, and is building mono-wing flyers in decreasing sizes. Currently, we are testing a 12 inch flyer.

-What features set Samarai apart from other micro/nano air vehicles, and why was this particular design chosen?

The Samarai is inherently stable in hover, mechanically simple and has very few moving parts. This makes it a very robust aerodynamically clean airframe, just like nature’s samaras. It does not depend on fragile feathers, delicate wings or precision moving parts to operate. This design was chosen because of its versatility, ease of operation, multiple launch and recovery options (even in tight spaces) and its ability to hover and take-off/land vertically. The rotation of the entire aircraft offers opportunities to achieve omni-directional sensing in a much simpler, lighter-weight and cheaper package.

-What’s next for Samarai, and how is the final version of Samarai going to be different from the versions we’ve seen so far?

There will be a demonstration of outdoor-indoor flight during the same mission later this year and further technology development and airframe optimization. No decision has been made about the final vehicle design.

-What’s the coolest thing about the Samarai project?

The opportunity to develop an aircraft that flies like one of nature’s winged seeds is very cool. Whereas the maple seed only auto-rotates and has no control over where it ends up, we can precisely control where we want the Samarai to go – this is an improvement on what nature offers us!

These are some very good points, especially about the simplicity and reliability of the airframe (compared to, say, AeroVironment’s NAV) as well as the capacity for omni-directional sensing… It’s no wonder that Lockheed Martin decided to continue the project; there’s a great deal of potential here. Personally, I’m a big fan of bio-inspired robots, and I love how Samarai has taken a simple but very efficient biological design and (as they point out) improved on it.

We’ll be keeping you up to date as this project progresses.

[ Lockheed Martin ATL ]

Comments (5)

Category: Biorobotics,Military,Research

• Add this post to
• Del.icio.us -
• Digg

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>