Japanese experimental drone....

[BaiHu]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pF0uLnMoQZA

[Byron]

Very cool! I hadn't seen this before so thanks for sharing.

I see that the YouTube video was uploaded over 8 months ago. Anyone know a name for this device/product/project, or if it has advanced at all since that video?

[TGS]

It's neat, but I'm not really seeing any huge leaps or significance here.

The big push with unmanned aerial vehicles right now is for autonomy, which there have been flying examples of for a few years now. I'm not sure what the impetus was for this spherical project.....seems more like it was something some university students came up with as the product of an exercise in displaying their engineering knowledge rather than an answer to any problems.

For manned aircraft being able to take off and land while standing up (as the kid spoke to), that need just hasn't really been present. Even in WWII engineers were working on that stuff. Heinkel-Lerche, Convair XFY Pogo, and I think Lockheed had one too. I'm sure there were others. The need just isn't there...there's other ways to do what they can accomplish, and I'm sure that if wrapping the mechanism in a ball was the answer then they would have done that 60 years ago.

[jstyer]

To me the advantage is a completely enclosed rotor... which would come in real handy for indoor use. Another advantage is lower power consumption when flying horizontally, which has pretty big applications.

[TGS]

Another advantage is lower power consumption when flying horizontally

Compared to what, and in what application? We already have UAV's with 24 hour endurance. Learn me something.

[jstyer]

Compared to a purely VTOL device... e.g. helicopter.

I don't see this thing, or anything like it for that matter, taking the place of fixed wing UAV's that can observe an entire situation from a couple hundred or a couple thousand feet for hours on end.

I see this thing zooming up to an infiltrated large structure such as a mall/school from a perimeter 500 yards away and once inside being able to navigate obstacles and obstructions and still be over to hover and get some solid video feeds.

One of these could search a building in a couple minutes vs. a couple hours for a typical tracked surveillance device.

So I guess I think a device like this would better serve an LE environment.

[TGS]

So I guess I think a device like this would better serve an LE environment.

That would be an awesome application if we could figure out a way to remotely control it without loss of connectivity from building walls/materials. I wonder what the costs of such would be though, and if it'd be affordable enough for PD's to actually make use of. Cost-effectiveness against a remote controlled car is certainly debatable in that application, as well.