“To start it, it’s a simple twist,” he says, giving the Black Hornet a little lateral twist back and forth with his left hand. Laskovich selects “indoor mode” for the flight. Mission control for the little bird involves a small non-touchscreen display and a button-filled controller designed to be used with one hand. The Black Hornet, he says, is “almost like a mini Black Hawk helicopter.” It is indeed just like a miniature helicopter it has a top rotor to give it lift and a tail rotor to prevent it from spinning around in circles-the anti-torque system. The drone has a nearly invisible wire antenna that requires a flick of the finger to make it hang out down off the back. Laskovich removes one of the toy-sized Black Hornets from a case there are three of them in this kit, meaning two can be charging while another one is flying. This latest version of the Black Hornet also doesn’t need access to GPS to fly, meaning it can operate inside a building or in other “GPS-denied” spaces. “And the size of this thing-it’s able to get into very tight corners.”īecause it’s so quiet and so maneuverable, the itty bitty drone offers a way to gather information about what’s in a space up to a mile away or further and stream that video (at a resolution of 640 by 480 pixels) over encrypted radio link back to the base station. Rob Laskovich, a former Navy SEAL and the lead trainer for the Black Hornet with Teledyne FLIR, the company that makes the diminutive drone, explains that the drone’s low “noise signature” makes it virtually undetectable when it’s more than 10 feet away from people and 10 feet in the air.
Popular Science received a demonstration of the drone on August 10, and had the chance to fly it, in a space on the ground floor of a New York City hotel near Central Park. The drone is small enough to take off-and then finish its flight-in an operator’s hand. Here’s how this 6.6-inch-long drone works, what it’s like to fly it, and how it was used that April day following the deadly structural collapse. It weighs less than 1.2 ounces, takes off from its operator’s hand, and streams back video to a screen so people can see what the drone sees and make decisions before approaching a structure that might have hostile forces or other hazards inside it. But another robot explored the collapsed structure that spring day-an exceptionally tiny and quiet drone flown by militaries that looks exactly like a little helicopter. Much of the media coverage surrounding that event focused on a robotic dog that the New York City Fire Department used on the scene, a mechanical quadruped painted like a dalmatian and named Bergh. On April 18 in New York City, a parking garage in lower Manhattan collapsed, killing one person-the garage’s manager, Willis Moore.
0 kommentar(er)
