In a sure sign that the military industrial complex is running out of quality acronyms, Lockheed Martin has posted a concept video of their VARIOUS UAVs. I’m not yelling, I promise… The name of the UAV is VARIOUS, which Lockheed claims stands for VTOL Advanced Reconnaissance Insertion Organic Unmanned System. Now, I get the Unmanned System part, and Reconnaissance sort of makes sense, but Insertion is a stretch and I’m not at all sure where they get Organic from, not to mention the fact that putting an acronym inside an acronym is totally cheating. Still, the UAV is pretty neat, with an enclosed lift system and stealth capability… But with a name like “VARIOUS,” I just don’t see this ever becoming a reality.

[ VARIOUS Fact Sheet (*.PDF) ]

Edit- I just realized that this concept isn’t exactly new (like, 2006-2007ish), but since I already wrote that whole rant about the acronym, I’m just gonna post it anyway. It’s new to BotJunkie, at least. Enjoy!

Northrop Grumman’s Global Hawk UAV, having proven itself with over 30,000 combat hours performing surveillance, is heading to Europe as part of a joint venture with EADS (the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company). Renamed the Euro Hawk, the UAV is getting a brand new surveillance system to accompany its already impressive airframe capabilities, which include a 15,000 mile range and 36 hours of endurance at over 60,000 feet.

EADS, is also working on a number of other UAV and UCAV projects, although budgetary concerns have put a bit of a damper on things. Pics, after the jump. (Read more…)

Well, here’s one thing you definitely won’t see a manned aircraft do… The QinetiQ Zephyr is an aircraft that can stay aloft pretty much indefinitely, thanks to solar power. Basically, the Zephyr is a big sheet of solar panels, some lithium-sulphur batteries, and a couple motors that happen to be arranged such that they make up an airplane. The entire vehicle weighs only 27 kilograms (it’s actually launched by hand) despite its 12 meter wingspan. By flying at 50,000 feet and above, the UAV is above most weather and turbulence, and simply charges itself during the day and powers itself off of its batteries during the night, needing to land only during solar eclipses (just kidding) or when the sun explodes (not kidding).

Realistically, there’s no reason why the Zephyr couldn’t stay on station for months at a time, and the only question is going to be can it carry enough payload to make its capabilities relevant. Qinetiq doesn’t seem worried about that, however:

Paul Davey, business development director for Zephyr said: “Zephyr can meet a wide range of civil, defence and security applications, including remote sensing, communications and atmospheric sensing.

“For military customers, it can play a major role in providing low cost battle-space awareness but it has also recently been selected as the platform for the Belgian Mercator HALE UAV system, a remote sensing demonstrator that will be used for mapping.”

Incidentally, the world record for longest continuous manned aircraft flight belongs to Robert Timm and John Cook, who kept a Cessna 172 in the air for 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, 5 seconds between 1958 and 1959. To refuel and get food, they’d fly down a long straight road and match speed with a fuel truck, and then hoist stuff up with a rope. After nearly 1600 hours of flight, they had to land when the plane’s engine deteriorated to the point where they could no longer climb away from the fuel truck.

[ QinetiQ Zephyr ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

Every time the Air Force sends a B-1B bomber on a mission over Afghanistan, it spends costs $720,000 in fuel, repair, and other costs. And when the plane comes back, it has to spend 48 hours being repaired for every hour it was in the air. All of which is double-crazy, because the bomber doesn’t really drop bombs over Afghanistan any more, thanks to the military’s airstrike restrictions. The B-1B just lingers over the country with a camera: a big Predator drone, at many, many times the price. “If the B-1 is not dropping its load of ordnance, we should withdraw it, and use unmanned systems instead,” Michael Wynne, former secretary of the Air Force, tells me. “They’re much cheaper.”

I tend to argue for unmanned systems on the basis of getting humans out of harm’s way, but the expense of an aircraft like the B-1 is just staggering. Maybe in the context of the military it’s not a big deal, but I am officially staggered. Admittedly, a B-1 is capable of many things that Predators and other UAV/UCAVs aren’t, but the point that Danger Room makes is that expensive assets are being used in situations where the majority of their capabilities are not being utilized, and it’s just a waste of resources.

Incidentally, if 48 repair hours for every 1 operational hour seems a bit, um, excessive (!), that number comes from USAF HQ, while a commenter on the Danger Room article who actually works with B-1s says that it’s nothing like that. If anybody here happens to know anything about B-1 maintenance (yeah?), please feel free to post in the comments.

[ Danger Room ]

In 2008, we covered the Army’s unmanned Little Bird project, which took an off the shelf MH-6 helicopter and shoved a bunch of computers in the back to make it optionally manned, and even controllable from an Apache attack helicopter.

Until now, the Little Bird depended on a set of GPS waypoints for guidance. But last month, the UAV (developed by an Army-funded team from Carnegie Mellon and the Piasecki Aircraft Corporation) completed a course which involved taking off, avoiding obstacles during flight, locating a safe landing zone, and then landing, entirely autonomously. Separate tests challenged the UAV by setting flight paths through obstacles or designating a landing zone on top of a car, but the Little Bird was able to use its sensors to dynamically alter its flight plan to account for all the unexpected and potentially crashy stuff. According to Danger Room, this was the very first time a full-sized helicopter made a completely autonomous flight.

It turns out that a lot of the technology used for the autonomous capabilities of the Little Bird was derived from Carnegie Mellon’s DARPA Urban Challenge vehicle, Boss. For example, a LIDAR scanner was mounted on the helicopter to create 3D maps of its surroundings to detect and avoid obstacles, which is a feature common to most autonomous vehicles. The video below shows such a system mounted on a small autonomous helicopter successfully avoiding obstacles including a 6mm wire with a 2% reflectivity at 90 meters, at a 2007 DARPA demonstration:

Now that Fire Scout has been canceled, the Unmanned Little Bird has the potential to fill that niche. And as much as I hate to say it (because I really liked Fire Scout), a full sized autonomous helicopter does offer a number of distinct advantages: for example, it can not only carry more payload, but it can also transport several people, none of whom necessarily needs to be a pilot. Also, since this is a modification of an existing platform, it’s probably going to be cheaper to build and cheaper to fix. Not nearly as cool as Fire Scout, maybe, but perhaps a better idea overall.

[ Little Bird UAV ] VIA [ Danger Room ]

Last month, South Korea deployed an armed surveillance robot at a guard post within the demilitarized zone in Gangwon Province. The robot consists of an array of cameras and sensors plus a 40mm grenade launcher.

Now, let’s be clear: this robot is remote controlled. It appears to have autonomous sensing and targeting capability, but it doesn’t fire autonomously… Rather, it can be fired remotely by a human. In this respect, it’s much the same as a Predator drone or a Talon SWORDS, except that it’s stationary.

This approach is very efficient if you have a lot of static area to monitor, since many robots can be controlled by a small group of humans, with each robot only alerting its controllers if its sensors detect something relevant. Human soldiers would probably perform better at most aspects of the task, certainly, but humans are very expensive to train, equip and maintain, while each of these robots costs only $330,000.

I managed to dig up a video from 2006 of what I’m pretty sure is the same basic robot; it’s in Korean, so if anyone can translate some of the interesting stuff, please post in the comments.

If this trial proves successful, South Korea plans to deploy the robots at all guard posts along the DMZ, and possibly to some offshore islands.

VIA [ Chosun ]

For those of you with spectacular memories, the BAE Taranis will look familiar to you from our trip to the AUVSI Expo last year where we saw a little model of it in the BAE booth. Britain’s Ministry of Defense Defence has now officially unveiled a full scale prototype of the Taranis low observable unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV), which is scheduled to begin flight trials next year. However, according to Peter Felstead, editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly, “this isn’t an aircraft that will go into service, it’s a tech demo.” Well, that’s unfortunate, but seeing as both the US and Russia are currently developing UCAVs, my guess is that we’ll see the Taranis (or something very much like it) turn into more than a tech demo in the near future.

We actually emailed BAE after AUVSI (i.e. in 2009) for more details on Taranis, and they sent us a few specifications… Check them out, after the jump. (Read more…)

Vecna Robotics’ BEAR Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot has been getting a workout at the Maneuver Battle Lab at Ft. Benning, courtesy of the US Army. What sets BEAR apart from other battlefield robots (like the Talon or Warrior) is its lift capacity of 500 pounds on two arms, which is a lot, like, seriously, a lot. PR2, for example, lifts about 4 pounds with each arm, which is a fairly typical payload for a domestic assistance robot. 500 pounds of payload means that BEAR can lift me three and a half times over, and look cute while doing so.

Speaking of, it turns out that those cute lil’ ears aren’t just for show: BEAR is cute to help calm down casualties, making the whole “you’re horribly injured but it’s okay because I’m a robot and I’m here to help” experience a bit more “pleasant.”

[ Vecna Robotics ]

Thanks Andy!

Almost exactly one year ago, Nexi took part in a rather silly (but reasonably effective) demonstration of a robotic role on a US Navy vessel. I guess the Navy was impressed, ’cause they’re now the proud owners of their very own Nexi, which they’ve named Octavia. What, exactly, is the Navy going to do with an MDS robot? Well, duh, they’re going to teach it magic tricks:

Your tax money at work. No, seriously, I wholeheartedly approve of my tax money being used on robot magic. The Navy, though, isn’t just about the tricks… They’re hoping to use Octavia to explore how humans and robots interact, with the aim of minimizing the amount of time that humans spend dealing with a robotic interface, and maximizing the amount of information that can be communicated. Octavia specifically is good for things like this because of her intensely expressive (and only mildly uncanny) face and head.

If you’re lonely and like the look of Octavia, you can buy one for yourself at the link below.

[ MDS Robots ] and [ Xitome* ] VIA [ Gizmag ]

*This website seems to have a virus associated with it, according to my virus scan. To go there anyway, click here.

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. (Read more…)