Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Army's New Bird-Like Surveillance UAV
The Army's new Maveric drone is unlike many military UAVs in that it has a convincingly bird-like appearance.
(Army Maveric UAV)
Maveric has a bird-like profile with flexible wings, giving it the appearance of a raptor in flight. The drone, made of composite material, can fly as high as 25,000 feet and zip along at between 20 and 65 mph, making it just the thing for reconnaissance missions. And those super-stealthy guys in Special Operations.“There was a Special Operations requirement for a plane that had a natural, biological look — it wasn’t supposed to look DoD-ish,” Derek Lyons, vice president of sales and business development at Prioria Robotics, told Flightglobal.
Earlier this fall, the Florida robotics company won a $4.5 million contract from the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force to produce 36 Maverics for an urgent, but undisclosed, need. Training the Joint Special Operations Task Force to use Maveric started earlier this month, according to Prioria, and fully-equipped delivery is expected in December.
Maveric weighs just 2.5 pounds and can be contained within a 6-inch tube. There’s no assembly required to prepare it for use, and it can be launched in less than 5 minutes by a single soldier. Once it reaches 100 meters, it’s silent to those on the ground. The battery’s only good for about an hour, but it takes just 30 seconds to swap a dead pack for a fresh one and have it ready to fly again. The drone is retrieved with a net.
Science fiction writer Roger Zelazny wrote about robotic birds in his 1980 novel Changeling:
The prototype blue-bellied, gray-backed tracer-bird with the wide-angle eye and the parabola ear followed the dragon-riders north. A series of the larger fliers followed it at well-spaced intervals, to serve as relay points for the spy broadcasts...
(Read more about Zelazny's tracer-bird)
The tracer-bird was used for surveillance.
He saw the blue-bellied, gray-backed thing upon the sill overhead. It was turned as if watching them. A portion of its front end caught the sunlight and cast it down toward them... The tracer-bird followed their every step, hung upon their words...
The Army's Maveric UAV also serves as an eye in the sky, broadcasting high quality video to troops on the ground:
The drone’s retractable gimbaled camera is flexible enough to capture footage from almost any angle, and it is said to be so good it can work in the most inclement weather.
Zelazny has you covered on that feature - and adds something that the Army needs - a wristband viewer:
Mark brushed back the soft green sleeve of his upper garment and pressed several buttons on the wide bracelet he wore upon his left wrist. The bird took flight again, climbing steadily. He controlled its passage with the wristband and saw through its eyes upon the tiny screen in the bracelet's center.
Via Wired; thanks to our friends at Frolix_8 for the tip on this story. (Note also that, even though they were not bird-like, Philip K. Dick wrote about robot tracking devices that were used for optical surveillance in his 1960 book Vulcan's Hammer.)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 12/2/2013)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 0 )
Related News Stories - (" Surveillance ")
Chameleon Personalized Privacy Protection Mask
'...the Virtual Epiphantic Identity Lustre.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.
Spherical Police Robot Rolls In China
'Rand could effectively be in several places at once...' - Niven and Pournelle, 1981.
Vietnam To Have Full Biometric Transparency
'inscriptions too small to be seen with the naked eye; microscopic data...' - Eric Frank Russell, 1939.
Simple Way To Defeat AI Face Recognition
'... designed to foil facial recognition systems.' - Neal Stephenson, 2019.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Tiny Flying Robot Weighs Just One Gram
'Aerostat meant anything that hung in the air. This was an easy trick to pull off nowadays.'
Some Ringworld Configurations Are Stable
'The Ringworld had no horizon. There was no line where the land curved away from the sky.'
TRANSFORM Dynamic Furniture Concept Becomes What You Need
'An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic...'
Harvard Metamaterials Change Structure Instantly
'Annealed in any shape for a time, and codified, the structure of that shape is retained down to the molecules.'
SnapBot Robots - You Choose Their Legs And They Choose Their Gaits
It's not really polite to tear the limbs off robots.
Dino From Magical Toys An AI Companion To Children
'...the imaginary companions discovered by needful children.'
Humanoid Robots Building Humanoid Robots
''Pardon me, Struthers,' he broke in suddenly... 'haven't you a section of the factory where only robot labor is employed?''
Darpa 'Defiant' Unmanned Autonomous Ship
'There was no wheel, and no steersman!'
What's The Best Way To Ship And Unpack Humanoid Robots?
'I opened the oblong box, where lay the automatons side by side...'
DNA Printed Book By Isaac Asimov Now Available
'They tied the memory to the bloodline and that was their record!'
AI Computer Chip Designs Passeth Human Understanding
'It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings.'
Space Traffic Management (STM) Needed Now
'...the spot was a lonely one in an uncharted region, far from the normal lanes of space traffic.'
Fine-Tune Your Infinite Book The Way You Want It
'I squatted down beside the roller and tried to make some sense out of the knobs. There were thirty-nine of them...'
SpiRobs Soft Spiral Robotic Arm
'Beware the long, flexible, glittering tentacles...'
Holland Factory 3D Printing 500 Tons Of Steak Per Month
'...I don’t understand technical things — tell me, does it ever feel anything?"
Stratospheric Solar Geoengineering From Harvard
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
