1: What alternative designs for quadcopter would be viable for small drones? Some lighter-than-air quality? I assume the complexity involved in making a helicopter collective would be too heavy. Is it really quadcopters all the way down?
2: Why not smaller? Would an even smaller drone be unfeasible due to battery weight and square/cube law issues? What's stopping us from gram-scale drones? Presumably the interaction with the air would create new problems and things to take advantage of.
Drones are integral to current warfare and will continue to become even more important. And as we've seen in the Caucuses, the nations with the most effective drones will easily conquer other countries without or with worse drones. Aside from that, we've come really far with drones which are amazing technology-wise. We have small drones like these with a 2km-range and large drones that can carry huge payloads, i.e. p…
Compared to nuclear and biological weapons, drones don't get my pulse up. A future where terrorist groups can produce their own weapons of mass destruction seems like it may well be on the horizon. Through exponential improvements in the underlying technology. Crispr for biology and laser based uranium enrichment for nuclear. I think it's entirely possible that the great filter might be ahead of us and might consist…
Sure but even then, those groups could use these long-ranged and relatively cheap drones to deliver all those horrific weapons. Huge rockets and such is fortunately prohibitively expensive and hard to manage. Whereas drones compared to rockets, are much cheaper and easier to manage could easily substitute those rockets and they would also probably be able to evade our defensive systems. For example, Turkish drones destroying Russian anti-air defense in the Armenian/Azerbajian war.
Two thought triggered by this article. 1: What alternative designs for quadcopter would be viable for small drones? Some lighter-than-air quality? I assume the complexity involved in making a helicopter collective would be too heavy. Is it really quadcopters all the way down? 2: Why not smaller? Would an even smaller drone be unfeasible due to battery weight and square/cube law issues? What's stopping us from gram-sc…
Interesting idea to fill a drone with helium, then presumably it could have smaller motors or longer flight time.
I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.
That's because of the energy density (per mass) of Li-Ion batteries. You basically hit a wall at 20 minutes that's very hard to push past (it almost feels like a law of physics).
But maybe they're using non-rechargeable batteries: zinc-air or lithium-iron-disulfide (ie. a 'lithium' AA battery) or something else? Trade offs are different for military.
Two thought triggered by this article. 1: What alternative designs for quadcopter would be viable for small drones? Some lighter-than-air quality? I assume the complexity involved in making a helicopter collective would be too heavy. Is it really quadcopters all the way down? 2: Why not smaller? Would an even smaller drone be unfeasible due to battery weight and square/cube law issues? What's stopping us from gram-sc…
Interesting idea to fill a drone with helium, then presumably it could have smaller motors or longer flight time.
I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.
I dont find it that unbelievable, there are a number of youtube videos of hobbyist grade quadcopters with what I believe are larger motors running 20-30 minutes on a pair of 18650 cells albeit without any autonomous capability.
I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.
That's because of the energy density (per mass) of Li-Ion batteries. You basically hit a wall at 20 minutes that's very hard to push past (it almost feels like a law of physics). But maybe they're using non-rechargeable batteries: zinc-air or lithium-iron-disulfide (ie. a 'lithium' AA battery) or something else? Trade offs are different for military.
The amount of batteries soldiers need to carry is ridiculous; a 72 hour patrol load out includes up to 25 lbs of batteries already!
I work with nano-UAVs. I am very skeptical that the 40 minute flight time is even close to being real. Especially with a quadcopter design. They are way to inefficient.
That's because of the energy density (per mass) of Li-Ion batteries. You basically hit a wall at 20 minutes that's very hard to push past (it almost feels like a law of physics). But maybe they're using non-rechargeable batteries: zinc-air or lithium-iron-disulfide (ie. a 'lithium' AA battery) or something else? Trade offs are different for military.
Based on the info sheet "A quick change battery" would suggest they went for the non-rechargeable route.