The Wall Street Journal provides this fascinating glimpse at some of the unmanned drones being developed by Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works

Lockheed is shedding its ambivalence and busily developing concepts for newfangled drones. One drone would be launched from, and retrieved by, submarines; another would fly at nine times the speed of sound. A third, which is off the drawing board but not quite airborne, has wings designed to fold in flight so that it could rapidly turn from slow-speed spy plane to quick-strike bomber.

Lockheed is drawing its drones from the same well that produced its stealth fighters: the company’s secretive Skunk Works unit. And the unmanned craft are just as radical as some of the unit’s past creations. “You have to throw out conventional aerodynamics,” Skunk Works head Frank Cappuccio says of the so-called morphing drone, with the folding wings.

As it pursues cutting-edge technologies, Lockheed – maker of the world’s costliest fighter plane, the F-22 – also wants to throw out conventional economics. The drone ideas it has disclosed are relatively inexpensive, more in the spirit of trailblazing models made in Israel than the $57 million Global Hawk unmanned spy jet made by Northrop Grumman Corp. at the same Mojave Desert airfield where the Skunk Works sits.

The U.S. arsenal should have plenty of room for both types. The fiscal 2007 Pentagon budget unveiled yesterday proposes boosting spending on unmanned aircraft to $1.7 billion next year. A separate long-term Pentagon blueprint calls for a quantum leap in drones, from hand-launched planes for battlefield surveillance and pilotless scout helicopters to long-range unmanned bombers that military planners expect to make up nearly half of the Air Force’s future strike fleet.
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[The] Skunk Works these days devotes some 40% to 50% of its own research funds to unmanned aircraft, Mr. Cappuccio says. Quietly, Lockheed has already contributed to the drone revolution. Skunk Works developed flight-control systems for the Dragon Eye, a five-pound, hand-launched reconnaissance drone used by Marines in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003.

It also designed and delivered the seven-pound Desert Hawk within 127 days of receiving an Air Force request. The total cost for the first six drones and laptop-computer control system was less than $400,000, Mr. Cappuccio says. To date, Lockheed says it has supplied 126 Desert Hawks, which are used for surveillance to protect U.S. bases in Iraq.

The Skunk Works’s new concepts, like the morphing drone, are more ambitious. With funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Skunk Works set out to develop a plane whose wings can fold inward in flight so it can transform from a slow, loitering aircraft into a speedy plane that swoops in to drop a bomb. The project tests the viability of new materials for aircraft skins and “smart” controls that enable the plane to morph within “10 to 20 seconds without falling out of the sky,” Mr. Cappuccio says.

Read the whole article.

Tags: aircraft | news | blog | weblog | military | surveillance | airplanes | drones | war

In Robert A. Heinlein’s novel “Starship Troopers,” the mobile infantry wore armored suits that used feedback to monitor and amplify a wearer’s movements. A soldier in a suit could leap over tall buildings, carry heavy weapons, crush steel, and yet pick up an egg without obliterating it. Since Heinlein first wrote about them, similar powered suits have appeared in Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War,” dozens of Japanese anime, and the movie Aliens. Now, according to MachineDesign, DARPA has invested $50 million in research to develop an exoskeleton that will enable a soldier to carry 200 lbs in a backpack over rough terrain.

…One recipient, a design team at the University of California, Berkeley, is under the lead of Mechanical Engineering Prof. H. Kazerooni. They’ve completed work on their first prototype, Bleex 1 (for Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton) and are working on Bleex 2.

Bleex 1 consists of a pair of hydraulically powered leg braces, more than 40 electronic sensors, a control computer, and an internal-combustion engine providing power from an attached backpack. The plastic and carbon-fiber braces are affixed rigidly to the soldier through a customized pair of standard Army boots, with more compliant and giving connections at the chest and waist. These looser connections prevent blisters and abrasions.
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Key to controlling Bleex 1 is the lack of operator controls. Instead, Berkeley researchers clinically analyzed the human gait and programmed the robotic legs to follow that pattern. The wearer simply moves his limbs, and the suit detects that movement and powers the suit to follow. The backpack load is almost entirely supported by Bleex. But because the device is so sensitive to inputs, it is almost unstable, says Kazerooni. The operator is needed to provide balance.

“The pilot is not ‘driving’ the exoskeleton,” says Kazerooni. “Instead, the control algorithms in the computer constantly calculate how to move the exoskeleton so that it moves in concert with the human.”
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The next-generation device, Bleex 2, should be unveiled soon. The biggest change, and challenge, is devising a new power source. For example, it could use a hybrid power source instead of just a gas engine, which might cut down on weight and noise. Weight reduction is a major goal of the team and Bleex 2 should tip the scales at half the weight of Bleex 1. In tests, Bleex 2 let operators carry 200-lb loads and run faster than 6 fps. The Berkeley team is also working on extending the range, flexibility, and agility of the system.

Read the whole article.

Technorati tag: bleex

In an update to this posting, the Associated Press reports that the Hayabusa probe appears to have landed briefly on an asteroid located about 180 million miles from Earth. After touching down on the Itokawa asteroid, the probe fired two metal projectiles into its surface, collected the dust that was kicked up and lifted off. It was the probe’s second successful landing on the asteroid, according to Japan’s space agency, JAXA.

Hayabusa was launched in May 2003. In addition to recovering samples from the asteroid, it is testing a new type of ion engine that uses an electric field to accelerate positive ions to a high velocity.

The probe swung by Earth to use gravity to accelerate toward the asteroid.

The Hayabusa mission is part of Japan’s efforts to expand its space exploration program after setbacks in recent years in its efforts to explore the moon and Mars. Earlier this year, JAXA said it would send its first astronauts into space and establish a moon base by 2025.

However, the agency said the Hayabusa has had trouble with its thruster system. That was the latest setback in Japan’s attempt to complete the world’s first two-way trip to an asteroid, following earlier problems with the probe’s gyroscopes and two botched practice landings.

Read the whole article.

From Business Wire:

Oshkosh Truck Corporation and partners Rockwell Collins and the University of Parma, Italy, announced that their robotic truck, TerraMax, has completed the DARPA Grand Challenge. The vehicle was one of five to complete the race.

TerraMax completed the 132-mile desert course with an unofficial run time of 12 hours and 51 minutes. The team was assigned a starting time more than two hours behind the first vehicle, and was “paused” numerous times by DARPA officials to accommodate disabled or slower moving vehicles on the course. As a result, daylight ended before TerraMax could complete the course on the first day.

Even though TerraMax was capable of operating autonomously in the dark, race officials paused it in the middle of the desert – among snakes, scorpions and coyotes – until daybreak for the safety of the chase vehicle drivers.

TerraMax idled in the desert overnight, setting off for the finish line at dawn. About five miles from the course’s end, this eight-foot-wide defense truck passed through Beer Bottle Pass, with just inches to spare between its bumper and a 200-foot sheer cliff. TerraMax was the largest and widest vehicle to successfully navigate this narrow, treacherous mountain road, demonstrating the precision of the vehicle’s numerous sensing systems. The large Oshkosh truck crossed the finish line just after noon on Sunday, October 9, following more than 30 hours of continuous operation.
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TerraMax’s autonomous systems were optimized for a more difficult environment than it faced on the racecourse selected by DARPA. “We decided in the beginning that we would design this vehicle to autonomously handle real off-road terrain, actively detect and navigate around obstacles, and maintain a high-level of confidence in vehicle safety,” said Scott Uhlir, Rockwell Collins principal program manager for advanced programs. “While our race time could have been improved significantly by altering these parameters, we finished the race believing that we are that much closer to providing a real-world solution.”

Three years ago the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development arm of the Pentagon, challenged robotics experts from across the country to develop an autonomous, driverless vehicle that could traverse a rugged, off-road desert course. After no vehicle completed last year’s 150-mile DARPA Grand Challenge, 195 teams entered the competition this year. Three levels of qualifying events narrowed the final field to 23.

DARPA Grand Challenge teams were given the race route just two hours before the start of the race at 6:30 a.m. PDT on Saturday, Oct. 8. Team TerraMax members then programmed the course coordinates into their vehicle.

Read the news release.

[Edit 10.11 9:56 EDT] Doh! I misread the release, it turns out that Team TerraMax completed the race but came in fifth. Here’s the correct tally:

• First place: Stanford Racing Team

• Second place: Red Team

• Third place: Red Team Too

• Fourth place: Gray Team

• Fifth place: Team TerraMax

Famed science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke has an interesting opinion piece on space elevators in the Times Online.

The space elevator was the central theme in my 1978 science-fiction novel The Fountains of Paradise (soon to be a Hollywood movie). When I wrote it, I considered it little more than a fascinating thought experiment. At that time, the only material from which it could be built — diamond — was not readily available in sufficient megaton quantities. This situation has now changed, with the discovery of the third form of carbon, C60, and its relatives, the Buckminsterfullerenes. If these can be mass-produced, building a space elevator would be a completely viable engineering proposition.

What makes the space elevator such an attractive idea is its cost-effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would add only about a hundred dollars to your electricity bill. And a round trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back.

Read the whole article.

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From an article at PhysOrg.com:

Fujitsu Begins Limited Sales of Service Robot ‘enon’

Fujitsu today announced that Fujitsu Frontech will begin limited sales of their new service robot, enon, on a limited basis in Japan from September 13, 2005. enon is an advanced practical-use service robot that can assist in such tasks as providing guidance, escorting guests, transporting objects, and security patrolling.

There is much anticipation for the practical use of service robots in a wide range of applications, to enable a more enriched society and in view of declining birthrates and aging populations in many countries. Fujitsu’s new service robot is a culmination of the collaboration of Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu Frontech to develop a robot with practical applications useful to people in their daily lives…

Fujitsu Frontech is scheduled to begin initial sales of enon on a limited basis in Japan, with delivery scheduled from November of this year. After observing operational performance of enon in various real-use situations through these initial sales, Fujitsu Frontech will consider expanding marketing of enon.

As a fully developed practical-use service robot, enon features enhancements such as lighter weight, smaller size, and more safety features than the prototype that Fujitsu developed last year. enon is an advanced service robot capable of accomplishing multiple tasks such as providing guidance, escorting people, transporting objects, and security patrolling, thereby differentiating enon from other service robots on the market that are designed specifically for only a single task such as transporting, cleaning, or surveillance.

The 4-foot tall robot on wheels–equipped with voice recognition capabilities, cameras and sensors–is expected to sell for 6 million yen ($54,000 U.S.).