Image Courtesy: The Defense Post
| It seems that the name of the game in the drone world is actually two games. The first being how long a drone can stay in the air, and the second being how much payload it can hold. The two are normally exclusive. You either have an extremely lightweight, long lasting drone, or you have a big bulky one that is capable of lifting hefty payloads.
But in “Mother Russia”, the two go hand in hand. We imagine the drone was designed to both transport prisoners to the gulag, but also Babushka’s famous borscht to her jealous sister the next town over.
The drone in question is made by Russian Helicopters Group (RHG).It definitely looks more like a helicopter, but being remotely controlled means it technically meets the definition of a drone. The plan is for the current BAS-200 and VRT-300 models to be retrofitted to carry first 440 pounds, and then a full ton. We’re not really sure if it’s an American ton or a British ton, or maybe a metric tonne but either way, that’s a lot of prisoners and borscht. |
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AIN’T NOTHING GONNA BREAK MY STRIDE,
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I’M FLYING AND I WON’T TOUCH GROUND
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Image Courtesy: Spectrum
Once again, engineers make their jobs easier by just copying what nature has already put years of work into. It’s honestly getting a little annoying. Every time we read an article about some new drone tech, it’s just a rip off of a bug or a bird. Do we really have no good original ideas of our own anymore? How did we rise to the top of the food chain by being idea thieves?
Anyway, this new drone has taken inspiration from beetles. No, not the long haired ones from the 60’s. The drone has a self righting mechanism that flips it over should it crash, or land upside down(aka crash). The second set of “wings” on the back are attached to servos that turn the drone over and get it back on to it’s landing gear so that it can take off once more.
Yes, it’s cool, but when are we going to hold these nerds to a higher standard? Any one with a magnifying glass can watch how bugs exist. But if we’re going to rip off mother nature, can we do something cooler? Like, lion claws, or alligator death rolls? Something a little more hardcore!
COMPUTERS ARE BETTER THAN HUMANS,
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 Image Courtesy: DroneDJ If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times. STOP TEACHING ROBOTS TO BE BETTER THAN US. It’s honestly like talking to a toddler. What happens when these racing drones don’t need us anymore? Hmm? Did you think about that, The University of Zurich? What will become of our children?
In all honesty, it’s not that big of a deal. So what if a drone can fly at over 100mph, and take turns that would turn a person into soup and not even the most skilled manned pilots can outperform them? There’s no big threat there, right?
The AI running the drone not only flew the course faster than the human pilots, but predictably flew more consistently. But there is some hope. Currently, the drones onboard hardware can’t handle how much data is needed to fly at such speeds and can only fly for a few minutes after hours of planning.
That’s a pretty good head start I would say. We’re not going to waste any time. |
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A FEW MORE FOR YOUR BRAIN
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