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Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

baesystems.com

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Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#41

Post by dimatura »

mattivc wrote: post #27

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 haven't looked into this drone in depth, but I think it may be feasible. The DJI Mini2, which any civilian can buy for $449, has a similar size, weighs 249g, and advertises a flight time of 30 minutes. (In my experience with the Mini 1, it's plausible).

Side note: the DJI Mini 1 is an excellent drone -- stable flight, great camera, and great range. I wouldn't be surprised if it outperforms this 'Bug' drone by most metrics, except for the critical (at least for military purposes) "not being made by a Chinese company" metric.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#42

Post by dimatura »

the__alchemist wrote: post #31

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…

There's plenty of multirotor VTOL drone designs out there, which combine the practicality of vertical take-off and landing (hence, "VTOL") with the greater efficiency of wings for longer range flight. Many proof-of-concept delivery drones I've seen are of this kind.

re: size, you can definitely make smaller drones. There's plenty of cute and surprisingly flyable drones out there that are less than 6 cm in diameter, some even with cameras. However, there's a few drawbacks at smaller sizes:

- Less power. They can fly fine indoors, but they'll be swept away by any strong winds. - Less space for electronics/camera and batteries, so image quality and flight time will suffer.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#43

Post by StavrosK »

leo-leo wrote: post #38
mattivc wrote: post #27

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. https://youtu.be/BOZStU-QCSc

Hahah that's fantastic, how that thing even takes off with a 1S2P 18650 I'll never know. That's 100 grams just for the batteries.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#44

Post by btbuildem »

Having played a little with micro-drones as a hobbyist, the ability to have an "eye in the sky" is amazing. Just today, we got a little turned around on a hike -- in less than a minute I was able to see our location from above and which direction to bushwhack a shortcut back to the main trail. I can see how this would be invaluable in a "strategic" situation.

Even the tiny ones are noisy and give away their position immediately. The effective range is relatively short, so you know if there's a drone, the operator is nearby. Weather is a limiting factor -- winds will tax the battery, and rain or wet snow will effectively disable them.

I wonder what counter-methods will be used against drones in the field. Really accurate markspeople? Portable EMPs? From what I've read, around airports etc they've been experimenting with enforcing no-fly zones with birds of prey!

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#45

Post by dimatura »

bencollier49 wrote: post #5

It feels like they're paying ludicrous money for these. Can someone in the know explain what differentiates these from shop-bought or scratch-built drones? As per this article below, the Nano 1A UAV Quadcopter Bug drone sells for £4,500 (a tenth of the price of another model, the Black Hornet Nano): https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/drone-nano-b... I appreciate that this is probably a variation on the o…

I don't know for sure what's inside this drone, but it's probably because they had to pay for developing and building a custom small drone. I suspect DJI or Autel can build better drones at a far lower price, but the UK military probably does not want to rely on a Chinese company for their drones.

Maybe they've could have turned to Parrot, which is French? Or maybe even that would not be desirable, especially after Brexit.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#46

Post by bowmessage »

jleahy wrote: post #35
mattivc wrote: post #27

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.

Don't a lot of the DJI models have a ~30 minute flight time? Point taken though, that there's a wall we hit with current battery tech.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#47

Post by StavrosK »

sirtimbly wrote: post #24
bencollier49 wrote: post #5

It feels like they're paying ludicrous money for these. Can someone in the know explain what differentiates these from shop-bought or scratch-built drones? As per this article below, the Nano 1A UAV Quadcopter Bug drone sells for £4,500 (a tenth of the price of another model, the Black Hornet Nano): https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/drone-nano-b... I appreciate that this is probably a variation on the o…

There's maybe $300 of off-the-shelf components (at retail prices) in the pictured air unit. It's the R&D time. The software dev and testing of the the whole system would be super expensive. Also there's no mention of their ground station design, how is it controlled by the operator, there's a lot of money and research that has to go into that half of the problem. Soldiers wont put up with the operational peculiaritie…

It's a toothpick drone with two 18650 batteries on it, I doubt it costs more than $100. There's video above of a hobbyist doing the same thing. I don't know how autonomous this one is, but most quadcopters nowadays run STM32F4 processors, so, as you say, the software would be what's expensive.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#48

Post by dimatura »

chillax wrote: post #2

See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano

That is the cutest drone!

I have one of these https://www.eachine.com/EACHINE-E10W-Mini-Quadcopter-Wifi-FP..., which is roughly the same size.

It has a functional camera which records to a micro SD card. The image quality is crap, but you can't expect much at $29.

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#49

Post by chillax »

Daniel_sk wrote: post #7
chillax wrote: post #2

See also: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano

"Although the Army is seeking a mini-drone for use by individual squads through the Soldier Borne Sensors (SBS) program, the individually handmade Black Hornet is seen as too expensive for large-scale deployment, with a unit costing as much as US$195,000"

They've probably trimmed the price somewhat since 2016: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/26359/the-pocket-sized...

Re: Bug drone for UK army that weights 196g, has 40 mins autonomy and 2km range

#50

Post by dimatura »

plouffy wrote: post #40
jleahy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it necessarily means non-rechargeable. Since charging usually takes a long time, generally in the field you carry a bunch of batteries charged ahead of time and swap them as needed.
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