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Paper link, includes videos of the prototypes: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07609-4
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378206931_Sunlight-...
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> and bops them near the temple with a small round. The smallest commercially available centerfire cartridge was the 2.7mm Kolibri round, which was too underpowered to inflict significant damage to a person other than maybe if you hit them right in the eyeball. That round weighed 5.3 grams while the OP article talks about a drone weighing 9 milli grams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2mm_Kolibri This drone just doesn'…
I suspect a 5.3 gram shaped charge detonated right near the head will do much more damage.
> is able to generate a milliwatt of power that turns its propeller at over 15,000 rpm. How do you every do 15k rpm on 1 milliwatt? This sounds very odd to me, because unless You're in vacuum this is going to be a lot of air resistance..
Citations: https://humbug.ox.ac.uk/sound https://pubs.aip.org/aip/pof/article-abstract/36/2/021907/32... https://www.dupagehealth.org/DocumentCenter/View/147/10-Thin...
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> However, the design can be miniaturized, and the researchers built a version that weighs only 9 milligrams. Ars A/B tests their titles so I don't know if the submitter editorialized or if they saw a different title than the rest of us, but the text of the article does include building a 9 mg version.
A/B test or not, 9mg is impossible. That would be half the mass on a grain of salt. At those length scales the interesting forces at play are not fluid mechanics, but capillary forces and surface tension. It also trivially easy to make - just rip a piece of gold foil weighing 9mg
Every time I see one of these drone tech demonstrations, I can't help but wonder how they will be adapted for warfare. This one... I'm seeing flying solar powered landmines (skymines?) that can flutter around an active combat zone aimlessly for hours until it detects a personnel target and bops them near the temple with a small round. I wonder if there are any actual benefits over just putting a solar panel on a regu…
Except that this one only hovers, so is wind-borne in terms of trajectory. It's a while away from being as useful as a real drone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect a 5.3 gram shaped charge detonated right near the head will do much more damage.
Not the slaughterbots bullshit again. If someone wanted to replicate the slaughterbots video, they would use the small drones only for face recognition to find the target and then eliminate the target with a small mortar from a bigger drone above. You know, the boring stuff that terrorists have already done in the past.
Every time I see one of these drone tech demonstrations, I can't help but wonder how they will be adapted for warfare. This one... I'm seeing flying solar powered landmines (skymines?) that can flutter around an active combat zone aimlessly for hours until it detects a personnel target and bops them near the temple with a small round. I wonder if there are any actual benefits over just putting a solar panel on a regu…
> and bops them near the temple with a small round. The smallest commercially available centerfire cartridge was the 2.7mm Kolibri round, which was too underpowered to inflict significant damage to a person other than maybe if you hit them right in the eyeball. That round weighed 5.3 grams while the OP article talks about a drone weighing 9 milli grams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2mm_Kolibri This drone just doesn'…