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MIT’s gas-powered drone is able to stay in the air for five days at a time
- jobu 9y agoThat's neat, but not very revolutionary. The Rutan Voyager flew for 9 days (around the world) without refueling back in the 80s - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutan_Voyager
- wyldfire 9y agoThat craft had two pilots onboard, this one had a single remote pilot. It's a real challenge to design a small craft that maximizes payload and minimizes fuel consumption along with scores of other constraints. Voyager also needed a long runway for launch and probably costs vastly more than this drone. Its use case as an emergency communication device is revolutionary.
- mikeash 9y agoZPG-2 did 11.5 days back in 1957. Maybe consider more than just the raw duration number?
- Dylan16807 9y agoThey are considering more than raw duration. That's why they're comparing a prop plane to a prop plane.
- reality_hacker 9y agoThese are two completely different things: Rutan max weight was 10,000 pounds, and this one is 150 pounds..
- projectramo 9y agoAt first I thought the kicker was going to be: the gas is helium, it just floats. And then I thought: why is that a joke? Could you save fuel keeping it aloft with a lighter than air gas and just use the fuel to move it around?
- okreallywtf 9y agoI thought of that the other day, wondering how well you could possibly control a hot air balloon (or helium) based drone. My guess is wind forces etc would be extremely difficult to deal with
- andygates 9y agoWith a (very) good weather model, it's possible to change altitude to pick up winds going roughly where you want to go. I don't know if anything does this autonomously - Google's Project Loon is the obvious candidate.
- PatentTroll 9y agoI think you just invented the dirigible?
- projectramo 9y agoHa, yes. I guess another way to phrase the question would be: why don't they use dirigibles to solve extended air time problems?
- mikeash 9y agoDirigibles require huge volumes, because the lifting power of gas is small. Those huge volumes make for a relatively weak, slow, and difficult-to-maneuver craft. A big reason why airships disappeared in favor of airplanes was that airships had a really tough time handling or avoiding bad weather because of these limitations.
- 9y ago
- PatentTroll 9y agoI remember when we used to call them model airplanes.
- csours 9y agoYea, but this model airplane is bigger than a car (looks like 3x wider at least)
- jaclaz 9y agoYep, we used to call them LARGE model airplanes. Now, seriously, allow me to doubt that flying some 2 minutes a plane (model or not) that has (or has the possibility to carry) on board five days worth of fuel actually means that the engine is capable of reliably running 5 days no-stop.
- blhack 9y agoHonestly I'm just happy at the renewed interest in these things.
- agumonkey 9y agoworks on wifi not UHF too
- prestonbriggs 9y agoReminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Butts%27_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_Butts%27_Farm
- andybak 9y agoGas in the American colloquial sense? Or actual gas?
- jmelloy 9y agoSo when asked to build a solar-powered airplane, they ... built a gas-powered one?
- balozi 9y agoI guess that when the vehicle isn't helping deliver communications to areas impacted by natural disasters or other emergencies, the Air Force will strap an AGM-114 Hellfire package on it and have it linger over combat zones for days. I hope these college kids are bright enough to recognize that they are building killing machines unlike anything warfare has seen before.
- pizza 9y agoRelated: Network of Concerned Geographers, geographers who are against the use of their research to increase military force https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/network-of-concerned-geographers https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/network-of-concerned-geo...
- pulse7 9y agoThe one who will build high-capacity, low-weight batteries will also build "super" killing and "super" spying machines...
- anotheryou 9y agoYou could rule out things by licensing.
- theWatcher37 9y agoLol, good luck holding off the US military
- TallGuyShort 9y agoExcept for their pretty good track record of doing things off-books when it suits them and keeping it out of a courtroom.
- anotheryou 9y agoIt's still a shame neither open-source nor inversities do it. Even if it's just idealistic.
- dougmany 9y agoCurious how they used gpkit for the design, I found this: http://gpkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#simple-wing http://gpkit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#simple-w...
- lochieferrier 9y agoCode is here: https://github.com/hoburg/jho https://github.com/hoburg/jho
- arikr 9y agoDoes anyone know where the US Airforce posted the challenge? Is there a good repo for all of the US Govts challenges/requests (e.g. DARPA ones + others like USAF?)
- rdiddly 9y agoWell they inadvertently proved once again just how energy-dense and how incredibly ridiculously efficient liquid petroleum fuels are and what a boon and a curse they've been to humanity during this brief one-or-two-century blip, and how difficult it will be to replace them with anything that could even come close to current levels of energy output/consumption. (That's a problem statement, not an ad.)
- mschuster91 9y agoYou can always synthesize gas (or use hydrogen as replacement, if your system can deal with the associated problems). Liquid fossil-based stuff is where the problem lies.
- murbard2 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
- mschuster91 9y agoYeah but that's fuels, they're relatively simple compared to the vast amount of stuff e.g. the plastics industry needs... and it doesn't scale at the moment.
- walrus01 9y agoIf you have a truly ridiculous amount of electricity, such as from a multi-megawatt scale photovoltaic system that was almost free to install, or from a theoretical very high power/low cost nuclear reactor... You could electrolyze seawater into hydrogen and store it in tanks. Doesn't necessarily have to be fossil fuel. The watthours per amount of hydrogen stored are ridiculous, but as giant scale photovoltaic becomes commonplace, it might be possible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_photovoltaic_power_sta... Cover a 20 x 20 km section of Libyan desert with ground mount 360W PV panels, there's your power source.
- faragon 9y agoThe future: ultra-light drones with 90% of its weight being batteries of charging during day time, so they can be operative at night. Flying 24/7, forever (e.g. zeppelin-like).
- motoboi 9y agoIf they need batteries, this cannot be forever. Not even close. Even less if they let the batteries deep-discharge, which dramatically decreases their lifespan.
- pj_mukh 9y agoConfused. There seem to be plenty of drones that can stay up there for 120 hours or so [1]. Presumably, their solar additions should be able to do even more? [1]: http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurethe-top-10-longest-range-unmanned-aerial-vehicles-uavs/ http://www.airforce-technology.com/features/featurethe-top-1...
- pdelbarba 9y agoPrecisely. This is an incredibly easy problem to solve. See all the Rutan projects, the model plane that crossed the atlantic, etc; most from over a decade or more ago. They claim that solar efficiency is not there yet, but look at the NASA Helios. Yes, it's large, but such is life if you want solar. The math behind it is incredibly simple. Yet, as usual, HN is foaming at the mouth because it has the word drone in the title. Edit: this is just another MIT fluff piece. Watch the video, it's a carbon fiber tube filled with random COTS hobby grade components. With a hot wire and some composites knowledge you could make this in your garage.
- lochieferrier 9y agoNASA Helios was quite expensive and tricky to build, with not a lot of margin left for useful payload. There's a weight runaway that occurs with solar powered aircraft, look at Fig 12 in this report: http://hoburg.mit.edu/publications/gassolar.pdf http://hoburg.mit.edu/publications/gassolar.pdf Disclaimer: I worked on this project, so am super biased.
- pdelbarba 9y agoI'm aware, I agree that solar aircraft is not an easy technology. I'm mostly pointing out how inane this gasoline drone project is when there are real problems to solve. To put it in perspective, the Helios project was 18 years ago and the Solar Impulse project improved upon the tech significantly. Edit: just got a chance to look at the report. Thanks for the link, there are some really interesting findings in there.
- throwawaycrank2 9y ago
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- jacquesm 9y agoThere is no way a gas powered drone will help bring internet access to some remote area. Why do these press releases always include the most farfetched goals?
- jandrese 9y agoIt will bring internet, but only to the US Army as it trundles across the area and needs an over the horizon repeater to get the signal back to the uplink station. A 5 day duration manually operated drone is clearly not going to provide long term service.
- Gravityloss 9y agoWhy not? They've done television broadcasts from circling B-29's ffs. This is quite a bit more efficient, to say the least.
- jandrese 9y agoYour example is from 70 years ago, and it proved to be impractical.
- mmmrtl 9y agoToo bad the project is (presumably) slowing down now that Warren Hoburg has been selected as an astronaut.
- emmelaich 9y agoJust goes to show there's nothing remotely like fossil fuels for energy density.
- nine_k 9y agoNuclear is! The problem is that the minimal feasible size of the whole system is too big for an airplane. Nuclear airplanes were actively designed in 1950s, but proved to be excessively heavy and unsafe.
- Sephr 9y ago> excessively heavy and unsafe Quite the understatement. I'd describe them as apocalyptically unsafe, seeing as many designs literally exhausted nuclear fallout.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion#Direct_Air_Cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion#Di...
- stingrae 9y agoI stand corrected. That is an interesting concept.
- crooked-v 9y ago> Direct cycle nuclear engines would resemble a conventional jet engine, except that there would be no combustion chambers. The air gained from the compressor section would be sent to a plenum that directs the air into the nuclear reactor core. An exchange takes place where the reactor is cooled, but it then heats up the same air and sends it to another plenum. The second plenum directs the air into a turbine, which sends it out the exhaust. The end result is that instead of using jet fuel, an aircraft could rely on nuclear reactions for power. A direct cycle design (which is the only one that was ever thought practical to use) passes outside air through the core for cooling purposes, then sends it through the exhaust. > Indirect cycling involves thermal exchange outside of the core. The compressor air would be sent to a heat exchanger. The nuclear reactor core would heat up pressurized water or liquid metal and send it to the heat exchanger as well. That hot liquid would be cooled by the air; the air would be heated by the liquid and sent to the turbine. The turbine would send the air out the exhaust, providing thrust. An indirect cycle design doesn't expose outside air to the core, but "never came anywhere near producing flight-ready hardware", presumably because the amount of water needed for cooling would have required an absurdly large plane and even more power, leading to recursive issues.
- rebootthesystem 9y agoI'm sorry to have to be negative on this. I look at a bunch of this stuff that is DOD/Armed Forces funded and all I have seen for decades are nothing less than what I would call scams. Total waste of taxpayer money. And this isn't universities only, it's companies that win stupid-as-fuck "research" grants and produce crap in return. There are a few companies out there playing with what are nothing more than ridiculously expensive toy RC planes (< 6 ft wingspan) that almost anyone could build out of parts available in the open market. This MIT thing is nothing less than an overgrown model airplane. It uses what looks like a stock 4 stroke model airplane engine with a stock model airplane propeller. It probably uses stock model airplane servos, electronics and 2.4 GHz TX/RX. Oh, wait, advanced materials. Nope. I have been designing and building RC airplanes as a hobby for three decades. I was vacuum-bagging large (12 foot wingspan) glider wings from fiberglass, carbon fiber and also Kevlar twenty years ago. I still have and use my vacuum bagging setup to build planes today. I have also made custom carbon fiber propellers by CNC machining aluminum molds and stuffing them with epoxy impregnated carbon fiber rovings. So, this is what I would call "advanced hobby" stuff. Special airfoils? Nah. Any serious RC glider pilot who has built planes knows what airfoils to use. Not a secret. These guys didn't do anything special on that front. Oh, but it can be taken apart and stuffed into a box for FedEx shipping. Guess what, so can any large scale RC glider. Nothing new there. Make the wing in six foot sections and you are golden. Yeah but... Yeah but nothing. Here's a guy flying an OFF THE SHELF 6 meter wingspan RC glider. What do you think the wings are made from? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3xxjqpIRNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3xxjqpIRNg That's nearly 20 feet. The MIT "drone" has a 24 foot wingspan. Here's another guy flying a 6.5 m, 21 ft motorized glider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_U_e_EEduo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_U_e_EEduo Replace the electric motor with an internal combustion engine and a fuel tank and bingo. Again, off the shelf. And here are a BUNCH of guys with huge gliders, powered and not, including one that has a 51 FOOT wingspan. And, look, no truck for launch, they use another large scale RC airplane to tow it up to altitude. Here's a list of a bunch of large scale RC sailplanes you can buy off the shelf today. https://www.scalesoaring.com/scale-sailplanes https://www.scalesoaring.com/scale-sailplanes Here's an 8 to 8.8 meter (~26 to 27 ft) DG 1000 S you can buy and build for about $5,000 Euro: https://www.paritech.de/content/modelle/dg1000.php https://www.paritech.de/content/modelle/dg1000.php Shame on MIT for being a part of a scam. It's embarrassing.
- flyGuyOnTheSly 9y agoVery impressive. I was quick to look up how long The Spirit Of Butts' Farm [0] was in the sky for, only 36 hours. In 5 days, assuming MIT's model held a similar speed, it could probably circumnavigate the globe. [0] http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0805_020805_transatlantic_2.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/08/0805_020805_...
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- Abishek_Muthian 9y agoTo be frank, for the non-Americans who read the article; the first thought would be that the drone is actually using some form of 'gas' and not liquid petroleum. I presume 'gas' in this context means gasoline and not LPG.
- chenster 9y agoIt definitely perplexed me until the word "gasoline".
- averagewall 9y agoSo many fascinating inventions seem to be supposed to be used for search and rescue. We've had jetpacks, robot drones, this drone, robot walkers, crashable drones, even the Boston Dynamics Atlas walking robot is for search and rescue. Is there actually a need for so many robots? Even if there is, is the market big enough to make economical sense? It seems like it's just an easy thing to imagine when you can't think of a real purpose for your robot.
- verroq 9y agoSearch and rescue is code-speak for surveillance and monitoring
- Nydhal 9y agoI always read "Search and Rescue" as a euphemism for police and military.
- petre 9y agoJust mount machine guns and/or a rocket launcher on the Boston Dynamics walker and you'll see a real purpose for it: infantry support. Search and rescue. Right. More like "seek and destroy". They probably got the idea out of Star Wars to begin with.
- cma 9y agoThe Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War Department. Search and Rescue is how lots of inventions are sold to newspapers, Search and Destroy is probably how they get sold at military trade shows :P.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The Defense Department used to just be more honestly called the War Department. Not exactly; the (now subcabinet) Department of the Army used to be called the (cabinet level) War Department. The Department of the Navy used to be its own cabinet-level Department. Then a new cabinet level Defense Department was formed, the Air Force split out of the Army and made co-equal, and each of the three (two before the split) service departments made subordinate to the new Defense Department.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- honestoHeminway 9y agoThey used a refill service drone?
- ge96 9y agoDamn that's like a DLG on steroids
- wentoodeep 9y agoEquip it with Neural Net ML and it will find it's way to reach ground in no time for at least 10,000 times.
- penetrarthur 9y agoThe less fuel is left, the lighter the drone.
- jhallenworld 9y agoWe need an efficient way to use solar to create gasoline.
- HockeyPlayer 9y agoSkyFront (https://skyfront.com/ https://skyfront.com/) builds hybrid drones than fly 10 times as long as battery only drones.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]