36 ms·

Considering 15 minute flight time, 2 hour battery recharging time, and several miles runway circumference, I guestimate you would need around a 100-200 drone sy

by guelo 8y ago

Considering 15 minute flight time, 2 hour battery recharging time, and several miles runway circumference, I guestimate you would need around a 100-200 drone system to maintain constant surveillance around a medium size airport.

crazysim 8y ago
You can probably cut that down a bit by doing a robotic battery replacement mechanism.
mbrameld 8y ago
Were those numbers in the article? Consumer drones already beat those numbers by half, I'd be surprised if purpose-built equipment would take a step backwards in battery technology. Also, why would you need that many drones instead of swapping batteries? I feel like I'm missing something, what do you know that I don't?
Varcht 8y ago
Some of the newer Lipo battery formulations can be charged at 15C or even higher, this allows for sub 3-4 minute charge times. For flight time you may be on the low side but close depending on how taxing it is herding birds, they can hover around for quite a bit longer but fast quick maneuvers take their toll.
tristanb 8y ago
you don't need a quad/octo copter to do this, it could be a winged aircraft, and those are several orders of magnitude more efficient.
bArray 8y ago
The technology is still young clearly, but: 1. Drones don't need to always be flying. Flocks of birds turn up on radar quite a lot and I don't see some early detection system for birds as impossible. 2. The flight paths for migrating birds can be predicted, reducing the need for a high presence in some directions. 3. 15 minutes of flight time is low, with some super big LiPo batteries for high performance drones you're easily getting an hour. The benefit of these large batteries is that they can be charged quickly too (charge rate based on power offered). 4. They are relatively fail safe, if the drones stop functioning you just go back to not having any real support. 5. It's likely that with some additional work, they could work on calculating the conditions that cause flocks of birds to fly towards scary sounding planes. I imagine it to be quite likely that they will only fly from certain directions given wind conditions, etc.
prawn 8y ago
Why would the battery charging time matter if you had a few batteries for each drone? You just manually swap or automate that process.

by guelo 8y ago

crazysim 8y ago

You can probably cut that down a bit by doing a robotic battery replacement mechanism.

mbrameld 8y ago

Were those numbers in the article? Consumer drones already beat those numbers by half, I'd be surprised if purpose-built equipment would take a step backwards in battery technology. Also, why would you need that many drones instead of swapping batteries? I feel like I'm missing something, what do you know that I don't?

Varcht 8y ago

Some of the newer Lipo battery formulations can be charged at 15C or even higher, this allows for sub 3-4 minute charge times. For flight time you may be on the low side but close depending on how taxing it is herding birds, they can hover around for quite a bit longer but fast quick maneuvers take their toll.

tristanb 8y ago

you don't need a quad/octo copter to do this, it could be a winged aircraft, and those are several orders of magnitude more efficient.

bArray 8y ago

The technology is still young clearly, but: 1. Drones don't need to always be flying. Flocks of birds turn up on radar quite a lot and I don't see some early detection system for birds as impossible. 2. The flight paths for migrating birds can be predicted, reducing the need for a high presence in some directions. 3. 15 minutes of flight time is low, with some super big LiPo batteries for high performance drones you're easily getting an hour. The benefit of these large batteries is that they can be charged quickly too (charge rate based on power offered). 4. They are relatively fail safe, if the drones stop functioning you just go back to not having any real support. 5. It's likely that with some additional work, they could work on calculating the conditions that cause flocks of birds to fly towards scary sounding planes. I imagine it to be quite likely that they will only fly from certain directions given wind conditions, etc.

prawn 8y ago

Why would the battery charging time matter if you had a few batteries for each drone? You just manually swap or automate that process.