Comments on: Single-wing flight based on maple seed aerodynamics

By: Bleh

Bleh — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:16:29 +0000

@AllYouPeopleWonderingAboutTheVomitCam

Forgive me if this has already been suggested, ’cause I didn’t take the time to read every damn comment.

I’m guessing that it’s fed into the software for the autonomous flight demonstrations.

With the bright IR lights arranged at known places in the room, software could be written to extrapolate location and maintain altitude. Notice the green blobs traveling in parallel horizontal lines once it gets going, that’s an easy thing to monitor with some machine vision.

By: sevendeuce

sevendeuce — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:50:54 +0000

Instead of cameras, why not incorporate a radar system. The aircraft is already spinning, you could mount sensors to the edge of the wing that could create a 3D map of its surroundings.

By: boss

boss — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:15:28 +0000

umm…. nature created that design for seeds to fall down… not to hover upwards.. therfore i dont think this design would be better than a helicopter design, but could be usefull for other things..

By: ManOfGallifrey

ManOfGallifrey — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:33:50 +0000

Love the idea, and love the ref’s to manhacks from HL2 even more,… that was the first thing I thought of when i saw this lmao. Interesting,…

By: anonymous coward

anonymous coward — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:40:59 +0000

@bothersaidpooh: The prototype demonstrated at 1:27 in the video uses a pager motor for thrust and + SMA for pitch. Of course SMA is a lot slower than the 10hz that would be needed for directonal pitch. I was planning on giving a voice coil a try if I ever build one.

Also, the line ccd in a scanner sounds like a worthwhile avenue to pursue. Pricewatch reports new scanners to be had for as little as $25.

By: keystoneclimber

keystoneclimber — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:04:20 +0000

@james – Thank you for that link! I’ve been trying to find that for months now! I remember seeing that thing years ago. The greatest thing about this design is that since it doesn’t rotate around a solid axis, it becomes translucent to a degree in flight. This makes it the perfect platform for a UAV reconnaissance device.

By: bothersaidpooh

bothersaidpooh — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 12:11:47 +0000

could also use a linear ccd extracted from a scanner- those are already fairly compact and with suitable software could generate a 360 degree image.

interestingly with the modern accelerometers and single axis chip gyros this could be scaled down to pager motor size, using an electrostatic actuator for pitch control.

By: blizzarddemon

blizzarddemon — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:37:49 +0000

Dan K …..read up on your tech sights, saying that is standard for basically saying you must click the article to see the movies.

Engadget uses that saying
Slashdot uses it,
Kotaku, etc etc

Its not a joke you idiot <.<

By: Zeke Shadfurman

Zeke Shadfurman — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:13:10 +0000

The camera exposure issue for a cheap camera at high shutter is easily fixed by adding aligned images together. Line scan or regular, create a 360 degree image, some clever software stabilization control and a orientation sensitive HMD and you’d have an awesome little spy device!

By: anonymous coward

anonymous coward — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:45:09 +0000

So here’s a thought for the vomitcam. The main problem, if you freeze the video on any frame, is not so much the high rotation speed, but the extreme motion blur. The apparently unblurred lamps in each frame are most probably caused by very short duty cycles, and each disk in the frame is the same lamp, smeared over the width of the frame.

To solve this, a shorter exposure time would work, but at the cost of less light recieved, and still doesn’t really eliminate the motion blur; short exposure time != zero exposure time. The best way to deal with this motion blur is to eliminate the motion.

Obviously the rotating platform could work, but that would probably eliminate one major advantage this design has, small part count and low weight.

Since we’re thinking outside the box, suppose instead the camera were fixed to some sort of spring system, with maybe a piezo-electric or voice coil exciter to cause the sprung assembly to oscillate about the craft’s axis. there will be a brief moment when the camera’s angular velocity is canceled by the UAV’s rotation. An advantage of this is that the acceleration will be close to zero at the peaks of oscillation, so that there isn’t much extra rotation during capture.

Such a system could be tuned to suit the camera, by adjusting the spring constant or mass of the system. No sliding parts are used, since the platform returns after each shot.

By: peter

peter — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:43:28 +0000

FYI:
Based on the same maple seed, Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired to design his ‘Samara House’, which I visited a few years ago. Worth a visit if you are in Lafayette, IN.
http://www.samara-house.org/

By: DigitalKlepto

DigitalKlepto — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:05:03 +0000

A pod in the middle could be fairly easy to implement. It would need a gyro to keep the pod level, but I would imagine it wouldn’t take much to add a simple bearing of sorts around the pod. Controlling a camera within the pod would be the trick unless you were satisfied with always viewing from a fixed position.

By: Godi

Godi — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:45:28 +0000

@rasz

Well, just the same construction as it is now, but without the servo controlling the wing pitch. So lateral control would work as it does now, but vertical control just by supplying more or less power. More power = up, less = down.

By: rasz

rasz — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:10:35 +0000

@Godi

and how would you turn? you would need at the very least some flaps on a fixed wing

By: Godi

Godi — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:51:24 +0000

I am wondering if you could implement this with a fixed wing pitch and just control height by adjusting power. That would reduce the number of moving parts and cost even further.