Fascinated with ornithopters—probably since reading "Dune", 45 or so years ago as a teenager.
(I may have been fascinated beforehand though—I had a small wind-up one as a kid.)
Kazuhiko Kakuta has a small YouTube channel where he experiments with ornithopter builds (and ornithopter adjacent craft): https://www.youtube.com/@BZH07614/videos
I wonder if falconry can fill that detection gap. Trained birds are already used to manage wild bird populations at airports. Now time to stop fake birds.
I remember once watching a bird in the distance through my binoculars and then how it inexplicably vanished into the distance, seemingly at great speed, not really flapping its wings. Seemed interesting, but I don’t go birdwatching enough to rule out my inexperience in looking at them properly. Maybe the binoculars had given me mild vertigo.
It won’t fly further than a headline, never a practical one. The biggest issue remains (after solving the other two) in drones now is endurance, and unless a breakthrough battery technology changes that, all these cool concepts will never materialize.
What is that, technically speaking? Last year I was working for a company that inspects pipelines with drones. They automated land, recharge, on pedestals placed along a route.
> The O1 drone weighs 1 pound and can fly up to 10 kilometers, which is a little more than 6 miles, for over an hour, according to a company fact sheet.
Yes I did, I even built similar ones before, and an hour is barely a number in real scenarios or BVLOS (add preflight post flight check, etc), plus, when you add the connectivity part (anything to allow bvlos) or pro payloads that one hour becomes 10min unless you go fuel. Robotic world has alot of over hype monkey business, don’t trust any “fact” sheet. There’s a reason why balloons are used in some part of the world to carry these drones for long distance.
This is the size and sort of drones a unit would use for scouting the local area. The range isn't great, but it is suitable for that and less conspicuous than the gas-powered drones used 15 or so years ago and the buzzing quadcopters of today.
I think battery life is a key limiter for this technology but how much time does it need? Something so small that can fly for fifteen minutes to collect intelligence et. al. might be sufficient. For example: a situation in which it is not safe to enter and detection would make it even less safe, ergo using something so tiny for only a few minutes could give valuable feedback to the user.
I think that endurance is an intrinsic limitation of drones, but I take the opposite conclusion as you. Instead of it meaning drones will never catch on, it'll mean that military missions and consequently the size and structure of the state will adjust their form to suit what drones are good at, rather than drones not catching on. In other words, we'll get drones, but we'll lose nation-states, rather than keeping nation-states but having them fail to adopt drones.
Drones' ability to absolutely dominate the battlefield inside of ~200km is just too powerful. You'll end up with small regional powers that are basically impregnable to invasion, but also can't project power because the range of drones is too short. City-states, basically. And because the defining characteristic of a state is its monopoly on physical force, the structure of the state will adapt to the dominant military technology of the time.
I am not so sure about that, before the whole weaponization of these drones, drone delivery was the hot topic, then changed to “last mile” delivery when dreams hit reality checks, then the whole “urban mobility” with all the connectivity and drones infra to land and take off, rally points, etc etc, and nothing really changed, connectivity is still a challenge, although there are plenty of work arounds (I am even building a platform that will solve a lot of nowadays drones flight issues), but the endurance? Nope, I remember we always hit this as the biggest showstopper in any mission, especially when these missions usually fly with no infra be it cellular or anything that could charge it. The only solution is scientists find a way to make lightweight high endurance batteries.
Birds Aren't Real
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real
Can't say they didn't try to warn us.
Fascinated with ornithopters—probably since reading "Dune", 45 or so years ago as a teenager.
(I may have been fascinated beforehand though—I had a small wind-up one as a kid.)
Kazuhiko Kakuta has a small YouTube channel where he experiments with ornithopter builds (and ornithopter adjacent craft): https://www.youtube.com/@BZH07614/videos
I wonder if falconry can fill that detection gap. Trained birds are already used to manage wild bird populations at airports. Now time to stop fake birds.
For those who don't know, the CIA had a similar (unsuccessful) program in the 1960s, which was kept secret for decades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_AQUILINE
I remember once watching a bird in the distance through my binoculars and then how it inexplicably vanished into the distance, seemingly at great speed, not really flapping its wings. Seemed interesting, but I don’t go birdwatching enough to rule out my inexperience in looking at them properly. Maybe the binoculars had given me mild vertigo.
It reached the edge of the simulation distance, and was unloaded to increase performance.
Metal Gear Solid
It won’t fly further than a headline, never a practical one. The biggest issue remains (after solving the other two) in drones now is endurance, and unless a breakthrough battery technology changes that, all these cool concepts will never materialize.
Power line perch recharging is the solution.
Bread crumb refueling
What is that, technically speaking? Last year I was working for a company that inspects pipelines with drones. They automated land, recharge, on pedestals placed along a route.
Technically speaking, I believe that was a joke.
Ha! Touche.
So the weird old lady in the park really does work for the CIA!
Did you fly further than the headline?
> The O1 drone weighs 1 pound and can fly up to 10 kilometers, which is a little more than 6 miles, for over an hour, according to a company fact sheet.
Yes I did, I even built similar ones before, and an hour is barely a number in real scenarios or BVLOS (add preflight post flight check, etc), plus, when you add the connectivity part (anything to allow bvlos) or pro payloads that one hour becomes 10min unless you go fuel. Robotic world has alot of over hype monkey business, don’t trust any “fact” sheet. There’s a reason why balloons are used in some part of the world to carry these drones for long distance.
These are winged drones. Gliding takes no energy. Maybe you're confusing drones with quadcopters?
This is the size and sort of drones a unit would use for scouting the local area. The range isn't great, but it is suitable for that and less conspicuous than the gas-powered drones used 15 or so years ago and the buzzing quadcopters of today.
I think battery life is a key limiter for this technology but how much time does it need? Something so small that can fly for fifteen minutes to collect intelligence et. al. might be sufficient. For example: a situation in which it is not safe to enter and detection would make it even less safe, ergo using something so tiny for only a few minutes could give valuable feedback to the user.
I think that endurance is an intrinsic limitation of drones, but I take the opposite conclusion as you. Instead of it meaning drones will never catch on, it'll mean that military missions and consequently the size and structure of the state will adjust their form to suit what drones are good at, rather than drones not catching on. In other words, we'll get drones, but we'll lose nation-states, rather than keeping nation-states but having them fail to adopt drones.
Drones' ability to absolutely dominate the battlefield inside of ~200km is just too powerful. You'll end up with small regional powers that are basically impregnable to invasion, but also can't project power because the range of drones is too short. City-states, basically. And because the defining characteristic of a state is its monopoly on physical force, the structure of the state will adapt to the dominant military technology of the time.
I am not so sure about that, before the whole weaponization of these drones, drone delivery was the hot topic, then changed to “last mile” delivery when dreams hit reality checks, then the whole “urban mobility” with all the connectivity and drones infra to land and take off, rally points, etc etc, and nothing really changed, connectivity is still a challenge, although there are plenty of work arounds (I am even building a platform that will solve a lot of nowadays drones flight issues), but the endurance? Nope, I remember we always hit this as the biggest showstopper in any mission, especially when these missions usually fly with no infra be it cellular or anything that could charge it. The only solution is scientists find a way to make lightweight high endurance batteries.
[delayed]
Feels like the end-game is that anti-drone defense turrets are just going to shoot down anything that looks like a bird as well.
I'm lucky enough to be employed in the robotics space.
It's not that all birds aren't real.
But some birds definitely aren't real.
This should be perfidy against animals.
Oh god, they're going to kill all the birds, aren't they? I wish I was joking.
If only there were other spectra that trivially distinguish birds from drones
Are you referring to thermal imaging?
Claude, this time do shoot at birds, make no mistakes.