digg

Facebook Connect Join Digg About
See the original image at news.stanford.edu

Stan students set altitude record for tiny autonomous planes

news.stanford.edu — A small Stanford battery-driven airplane flies itself to an altitude of 7,000 feet, apparently setting a world record.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 21, 2009

Digg DudeWhat is Digg?

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. Digg surfaces the best stuff as submitted and voted on by the community. Take the Tour to learn more.

31 Comments

show profanity settings
expand all
  • D4RK354B3R, on 09/21/2009, -1/+7Stanford. I should be going to that school.
  • ThatIsTerrible, on 09/21/2009, -0/+6The plane looks so tiny but the 7000 feet altitude it flew is really impressive for an electrically powered airplane.
  • TexMexRex, on 09/21/2009, -1/+6The article does a bad job of pointing out the important part is the plane is not R/C. It's autonomous. It's a robot using a program to make it's decisions.
    I think anything that gets these kids out of the classroom to experience the real world where your experiment can crash into the ground, etc is important.
  • aosmitty, on 09/21/2009, -0/+3FTA:

    "Although the planes were developed as a class exercise, small, inexpensive autonomous planes that fly thousands of feet in the air could have a wide variety of applications. Fitted with cameras, for example, they could monitor traffic, look for fires, sample the atmosphere, or conduct other surveillance, Alonso said.

    So-called "micro" unmanned aerial vehicles could fill niche roles that larger drone planes are too large and expensive to fill, said Brendan Tracey, a second-year masters student. In particular, he envisions autonomous planes equipped with environmental sensors to monitor air pollution."

    So, these could be remarkably cheap and portable unmanned scouts for all the reasons above.

    I wouldn't be surprised if they found their way onto a battlefield in ten years as an on-the-spot recon/remote targeting device. Additionally, the small size should equate to a tiny radar signature making them stealthy in both the radar and visual aspects.
  • inactive, on 09/21/2009, -1/+3Its just a day. numerology is bollocks.
  • Klaatuprime, on 09/21/2009, -0/+2What a nicey, nicey way of saying you're doing military research for something that's going to bring you a serious high dollar defense contract. This is specifically an area in which the military currently has a high demand for new technology. Claiming it's for research "to know more about the world we live in" is either stupid naivetĂ©, or more likely an attempt to blow smoke up our collective tokhes.
    Somebody fill this guy's house with popcorn and hit it with a laser already.
  • achansen121, on 09/21/2009, -0/+2What in the hell are you talking about? They mention it at least 7 times in the article as well as the title.
  • sethc, on 09/21/2009, -0/+2"What did u do this wknd?"

    'Oh, nm, pretty boring.. u?"

    "..was ***** around w/ this thing I made and broke a world record rofl"
  • geesamba, on 09/21/2009, -0/+2That, and a bit bigger wingspan.
  • cowthulu, on 09/21/2009, -5/+6I hate Stanford. They expelled Chuck.
  • Klaatuprime, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1Ten? Try a year.
    The radar signature would register as relatively small bird if even at all.
  • chongqingking, on 09/22/2009, -0/+1autonomous planes = the future of terrorist suicide bombings?

    and to test launch on 911 anniversary by a student named "Zouhair Mahboubi" sure doesn't lower the eyebrow.
  • wjlaw100, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1Very Impressive, and sounds really cool, except if a light breeze comes up, then the plane will simply be blown away from the area it was suppose to be in.
  • ellectronico, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1Am i the only one that is disappointed it went just 7k feet? I'm not saying i could do better but come on, these are some bright young minds.
  • ellectronico, on 09/22/2009, -0/+1Well good luck next time! lets see 14k!
  • MWeather, on 09/22/2009, -0/+1How do you plan on launching 10,000 of them if they're much bigger than these?
  • anthropodeus, on 09/21/2009, -1/+2i dont understand . . what would the objective be? giving the north koreans toy planes?
  • slashdotordigg, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1who said they have to use student version of these? I am talking about potential of the concept in designing and utilizing these very small vehicles. Few ounces were enough that students were able to conduct simple observation with camera and other scientific eqiupment and they went further to set world record on how high they flew those things autonomously. There are already military grade inventions that are capable of doing the same thing and the same time carry a small weapon. They come in all sizes. It does not have to be 1 foot wide or 2 foot wide. How high they can fly is also something not a big deal in some situations. (yet it is incredible work and is something of value though in certain situations)
  • frequentFlyer, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1If they built into their AI the ability to recognize thermals and take advantage of them, they would go to 30,000ft if they wanted to.
  • MWeather, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1These things can't have a payload more than a few ounces. Unless it landed on someone's head, you're just going to make their ears ring for a few minutes.
  • hereticoftruth, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1They didn't launch from Flagstaff Arizona, did they? If they did it doesn't count.
  • slashdotordigg, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1have bomb in it and make it explode at critical locations. Or locate key high figures including Kim Jong Il. Korean military is rumored to have bots that resembles dragonflies, helicopters, birds with cameras, radar, guns, bombs in it. I was joking about the Starcraft reference. But I not just quoting from some fiction novels. From Science magazines that i read, i've seen that South Korean army and US army have such bots.
  • geesamba, on 09/21/2009, -0/+1They mentioned GPS onboard. I would be willing to bet it can steer its way back on track.
  • slashdotordigg, on 09/22/2009, -0/+1That's why i said mothership(s). Why do i have to use 'a' mothership to drop it? I could just launch it at the border or at the ocean. but in case these don't fly far enough, you can use number of military grade planes to drop them. Consider each of them are 1kg each. far more than few ounces. Antonov_An-225's payload is 250,000 kg. Once launching mechanism, facility gets implemented into the plane it would be less than quarter million of them but still more than 10,000 of them you asked.
  • mkeup, on 09/22/2009, -0/+0http://www.mkeup.net/

    http://www.mkeup.net/m21/
  • supertom, on 09/21/2009, -1/+1You can't see it, but my palm is on my face.
  • Zoohair, on 09/22/2009, -0/+0I am disappointed too. We were hoping to get almost double that, but as the article mentioned the wind kept blowing us out of the airspace that we were assigned.
  • inactive, on 09/21/2009, -4/+2Plane crazy.
  • slashdotordigg, on 09/21/2009, -3/+1Carrier has arrived!
    imagine 10,000,000 of those dropped from motherships above North Korea. 0 Casualty on UN forces, unification of two Koreas would be the dream come true.
    and it's still gonna cost only few billions of US dollars and few dozens of Korean male capable of mouse moving skills.
  • mooocow, on 09/21/2009, -5/+1Yeah I am guessing September 11 is not the best day to be launching UAV's at 7000ft :(
  • MokaPot, on 09/21/2009, -6/+1Honestly, I didn't get it. I'd expect much more from a grad school research project than an battery-driven RC airplane.. I don't really see the application in real life, or maybe the article didn't explain it.

  • Add a Comment

    Login or register to comment!
    Or, sign-in super fast with your Facebook account ...


© Digg Inc. 2009 — Content created and posted by Digg users is dedicated to the public domain | Terms of Use Updated | Privacy Policy
DIGG, DIGG IT, DUGG, DIGG THIS, Digg graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the trademarks of Digg Inc.