Posts Tagged ‘aviation’
For the First Time, Researchers Use an Atom Interferometer to Measure Aircraft Acceleration
This is useful because atom interferometers are super sensitive, more so than the inertial sensors used widely on modern aircraft. Those inertial sensors have been known to fail with potentially disastrous results, but more frequently they cause slight errors to creep into navigation systems that must later be corrected. With no moving parts and a high degree of accuracy, atom interferometers could mitigate these problems, recording inertial effects 300 times weaker than the normal fluctuations in the acceleration in a standard aircraft.
But the vibrations in an aircraft have previously made deployment of atom interferometers in planes unfeasible. That’s where Remi Geiger at the Laboratoire Charles Fabry in Paris comes in. He and his colleagues have created a system that compensates for the effects of vibrations via mechanical accelerometers that record the movements of the aircraft itself.
Using that vibration data, their system recalculates the interferometer’s data to compensate for any vibration that might be skewing its final result. By stripping out the vibration noise, they end up with a clean, high-resolution atom interferometer result. The system could go a long way toward delivering better acceleration data to the cockpits of large jets. Geiger and company have already tested their system successfully on an Airbus A300.
But an atom interferometer that can operate free of laboratory constraints isn’t limited to jetliner applications. The researchers hope their method will lead to more precise measurements of geodesy and of gravity itself, enabling some fundamental experiments that have been previously very difficult to conduct and challenging some existing principles of physics with more and better data. More at .
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Video: Watch the JSF’s New Cruise Missile Acquire and Engage a Naval Target
The Naval Strike Missile is a fire-and-forget cruise missile--that is, you preprogram the missile with a target, and it finds its own way there. The 900-pound NSM is super-nimble and equipped with GPS and other inertial and terrain-based systems that allow it to hug the contours of a coastline, cruise just above the surface of the ocean, or negotiate terrestrial terrain at very low radar-evading altitudes.
The NSM is expected to be a regular payload aboard the F-35 Lightning II when it finally enters service, and if the video below is any indication it will be a formidable adversary. Watch as the missile is launched from a California test range, “sea-skims” low across the Pacific, flies low over an island, and then acquires its target on the far side. Not to give the ending away, but this naval vessel doesn’t stand a chance.
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The Military’s Airship Renaissance Deflates Over Lack of Access to Helium
Industry can't keep up with massive helium demand
We’ve that helium supplies are running short (can we go ahead and coin the term “peak helium?”), but that was at a more macro, global scale. The military’s problem is more specific: it needs to get more reconnaissance aerostats in the sky over Afghanistan, and it can’t find dealers that can fill its tall orders for helium.
Airships like Northrop Grumman’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) need a hell of a lot of helium--roughly 800,000 cubic feet per--quantities that commercial dealers can’t seem to reliably meet. In fact, , when the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency recently put out a request for helium to meet the DoD’s airship needs, no one called back. They had to break down their bulk order into smaller pieces.
That’s not to say we’re completely out of helium, but right now demand seems to be outstripping supply. Helium gas isn’t just good for party favors. Helium has the lowest boiling point of any known readily available gas, so it’s an in-demand gaseous cooling source for things like superconducting magnets in MRI scanners or particle colliders. It’s used in everything from fiber optics to quantum computers.
And, of course, in airships, which brings us back to the problem at hand. The military continues to fuel up more blimps--they can carry way more reconnaissance gear than, say, Predator and Reaper drones, and they can stay aloft for days rather than hours. But there’s really no great way to get at helium in large quantities cheaply and easily. Which means those colorful party balloons may become a lot more expensive at some point in the next decade.
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SASSA, the Military’s New Satellite Self-Defense System, is Ready to Go to Space
That marks a pretty big milestone for space-based defensive capabilities. As of right now, U.S. military forces are extremely reliant upon orbiting hardware like GPS satellites, reconnaissance satellites, and the like. They guide our ships and our planes, augment our missile guidance, and otherwise tell our troops where they are on the map, not to mention providing critical communications.
They are also largely undefended. Space is a big place and it’s difficult to cut down the angle of attack for something orbiting up there in free space. As such, military leaders are increasingly concerned about threats like (remember China’s 2007 ASAT missile test that ?), which could effectively put American forces in the dark in the case of all-out warfare.
Enter SASSA, which will act like a radar receiver for orbiting satellites, warning satellite handlers if it perceives incoming threats ranging from ASAT missiles to ground based lasers or signals that could blind it or jam its signals. No one is yet divulging the details of exactly how SASSA will work (this is top secret satellite stuff, after all), but as , maybe that’s why we’re being fed just this little nugget of information about the system.
After all, meddling with another state’s satellites is a major offense under international convention, and it’s only something you do if you think you can get away with it. SASSA will make it more difficult for another actor to mess with America’s space-based capabilities. And maybe that’s exactly why they’re getting the word out about SASSA beforehand.
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Killer Drones: When Will Our Weaponized Robots Become Autonomous?
We know that various research and academic institutions are working on robot autonomy (regular readers see stories and videos of these autonomous ‘bots all the time), but what’s a bit mind-blowing is just how far along some of this technology is. At Fort Benning, a team of Georgia Tech computer scientists is helping the military demonstrate software that can autonomously--without a shred of human input--acquire and make life or death decisions about targets on the ground.
That is, the only thing that’s missing is the capability to fire. Add that, and you’ve got a killer robot.
Of course, these are just demonstrations (for now). But they create a blueprint for the inevitable future of warfare: when time is critical and running decisions up the chain isn’t feasible, software will make key decisions about what constitutes a target, what falls within the bounds of the “rules of war,” and whether or not it’s safe to commence firing. If a program can satisfy whatever requirements have been seeded in its coding, then it’s bombs away.
It all sounds a bit Skynet, but it’s moving forward at a rapid pace within the U.S. military, driven both by need (putting fewer human lives in harm’s way is obviously preferable) and that Cold War-esque mentality that if America isn’t at the front of autonomous warfare then it can only be behind. That sentiment is not entirely misplaced: South Korea has already deployed along the demilitarized zone bordering North Korea, and the Chinese for autonomous weapons systems as well.
So what is the state of “lethal autonomy?” To put a number on it, it’s at least a decade (probably more) away from becoming battlefield reality. I sat in on a lecture at last month’s AUVSI unmanned robotics conference titled “Armed and Autonomous” where the focus was on the idea of deploying armed UAVs into contested airspace--using unmanned planes to deliver surface-to-air and air-to-air weapons in areas where anti-air defenses are still intact.
What might surprise many is that the computer programs necessary to evade air defenses and execute these kinds of missions autonomously already exist. The backbone technology is there, we just don’t trust it enough to actually deploy it. The idea of unleashing armed and autonomous robots, aerial or otherwise, is naturally abhorrent to us because robots--at least the robots that we have now--are incapable of making common sense decisions or distinguishing--with 100 percent accuracy--between friend or foe, surrendering troops or hostile enemy, the benign and the threatening.
But that capability gap between human and machine, as WaPo reports, is shrinking. The question is: when will it have shrunk enough that we trust robots with life and death decisions? As we’ve been coldly reminded by incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, even highly trained soldiers don’t always make the right decisions on the ground. At what percentage of error are we willing to say autonomous robots are ready for war?
Click through below for the . It’s a quick and engaging morning read.
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The U.S. Army Is Ordering Weaponized, Soldier-Launched Kamikaze Suicide Drones
The drone aircraft are made by Aerovironment, the same California company that makes the Nano Hummingbird surveillance drone (the one regular readers know as a PopSci favorite). Their “Switchblade” drone packs neatly into its launch tube, which then packs easily into a backpack. When it’s time to deploy, soldiers quickly set up the launch tube and send Switchblade skyward, where its wings deploy and its quiet electric engine fires up.
From there a pilot can operate the Switchblade remotely, using a video feed from the drone to pilot it and make observations of a potential target. If the target is confirmed, the pilot can arm the on-board munition and fly the drone straight into the target. The drone can fly piloted or autonomously (though naturally it has to receive human commands before arming and attacking). It can even power down its motor and glide in for the kill, offering mission operators a stealthy means of approach.
While a weaponized robotic aerial kill vehicle sounds cool enough on its own, what Switchblade really offers is a capability--it can loiter overhead and observe a situation on the ground, confirm that a target is indeed a legitimate target and not a civilian or some other non-threat, and then deliver a strike without the soldier who deployed the aircraft ever having to stick his head out. Such a capability trumps calling in airstrikes or artillery fire for small targets, and perhaps best of all it’s a capability available at soldier level.
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The First Manned, Untethered All-Electric Helicopter Flight Takes Off
The helicopter was one of Chretien’s own design that he patched together nearly completely by himself in about 12 months. And his 2 minute and 10 second flight means he beat helicopter powerhouse Sikorsky to the prestige of being the first to get a manned, untethered electric helicopter off the ground.
But it wasn’t easy. Helos aren’t really great candidates for electrically-driven power plants because they are so power hungry. While airplanes and cars require a lot of juice to get moving, both of them can coast on momentum. An electric airplane sucks up a lot of power during takeoff, but once airborne it can cruise and then land with relatively little power suck.
Helicopters, on the other hand, are pretty much fighting gravity all the way through a flight. So when Solution F asked Chretien to build and fly the first manned electric helicopter, he got to work putting together the leanest, lightest, most efficient design he could conceive of.
The result is what you see above: a coaxial rotor design (that’s the kind with two rotors that rotate in opposite directions--a favorite of Sikorsky) that dispenses with a weighty and inefficient tail rotor and a heavy cyclic control, opting instead for a simple tail fin and a blade tilting system that the pilot uses to manually pitch the blades one way or another to control the helo’s direction of flight. He crafted a frame from sturdy, crash-worthy aluminum tubing to keep him safe in case of a rough landing, and then packed a bunch of notoriously volatile Lithium ion polymer pouch cells under the seat to make sure he wouldn’t be safe in case of a rough landing. To quote Chretien: “In case of crash I stand good chances to end up in kebab form.”
Gizmag has a great breakdown of the design process and the different components that came together to make this historic flight happen, as well as a thorough photo gallery of the helo and its historic flight. Click through below.
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