Servo - April 2013

www.servomagazine.com/index.php?/magazine/article/april2013_Robytes

A UAV to Track Taliban

It may not look a great deal more sophisticated than my S102G toy chopper, but the PD-100 Black Hornet Personal Reconnaissance System from Prox Dynamics (www. proxdynamics.com) was developed for serious employment by law enforcement, search-and-rescue personnel, and other government users. It is covered by Norwegian Arms Control provisions and will be sold "only to government institutions and organizations," so there's no point in drooling. In fact, it has recently been adopted by British forces as their latest anti-Taliban tool.

The 8 in long, 15 g molded plastic drone carries three cameras, and soldiers can pilot it manually or program it to fly according to battlefield coordinates using GPS. According to the Brits' Major Adam Foden, "Black Hornet is a game-changing piece of kit. Previously, we would have sent soldiers forward to see if there were any enemy fighters hiding inside a set of buildings. Now, we are deploying Black Hornet to look inside compounds and to clear a route through enemy-held spaces. It has worked very well, and the pictures it delivers back to the monitor are really clear. And Black Hornet is so small and quiet that the locals can't see or hear it."

Few specs were provided, but reports have it that the nanocopter provides up to 30 min of flight time and a top speed of 20 mph. A complete system includes three PD-100 units, a controller with LCD display, and a transport case with charger. It is billed as "affordable," but in the military world, that could mean anything. Presumably, it will not be in the F- 16 range.

The PD-100 Black Hornet from Norway's Prox Dynamics.

And a UAV to Track You

If you are a typical Facebook user, you no doubt keep your friends and relatives up to date about your fascinating life with a stream of information about your pet's health, what you had for breakfast at Denny's, how late you worked last night, and so on. You may even supplement that with plenty of photos in case the folks don't actually know what a Grand Slam breakfast looks like. Do you ever get the feeling, though, that some people just aren't getting enough details? If so, then you need MeCam — a microcopter designed exclusively to follow you around all day and take streaming videos of your every move.

Developed by San Francisco based Always Innovating ( www.alwaysinnovating.com), the quad-rotor UAV launches from your hand and navigates either by voice command or a "follow-me" mode. It then streams the video to an Android or iOS phone or tablet, so you can share it via Facebook, YouTube, or another social networking platform. The good news is that the targeted MSRP is only $50. The bad news is that the company isn't actually building any of them; it is only offering licenses to other entities to produce and sell it. We therefore can't be sure that it will ever really be available, but a company press release predicts that the product could "hit the shelves by the beginning of 2014." We'll see.