This Navy-funded drone is at home in sea and sky - goodsonsentes

We've all detected of amphibious cars, but what about amphibious drones? Researchers at Rutgers University took on the challenge of building an remote-controlled vehicle that can soar through the air and seamlessly transition to swim through the water. They call it the Naviator.

Amphibian aren't a new concept. In fact, inventors have been playing with the idea since the 1930s, when Boris Ushakov, a student engineer at a Soviet military academy, proposed a three-engine floatplane that could flood its fuselage to sink beneath the weewe and torpedo its enemies when they got close. The project was scrapped before it was always built.

Other attempts followed, including a flying submarine construct masterminded away Donald Thomas Reid in 1962. Like Ushakov's aircraft, Reid's vehicle was a floatplane built victimisation parts from other planes. Reid's flying submarine proved capable of dive approximately 3.5 meters merely was unable to sustain long flights because of its enormous weight. Which leads us to the Naviator.

The real challenge was building a craftiness that can mathematical function every bit considerably in water and in the air and was competent to transition repeatedly between the two, said Michael Benyo, who's in the technology department at Rutgers University.

"What we did was we decided we had two sets of propellers, the propellers in a higher place and the propellers below," he said. "There is a sensor that detects when the drone is in the water. It shuts off the upper propeller, and the glower propeller pulls information technology into the water seamlessly and smoothly."

Rutgers University

The Naviator amphibian drone uses two sets of propellers to help it transition from air to water.

Once the drone is underwater, both sets of propellers kick back in merely at a often slower speed. This allows the Naviator to run for as long as 24 hours in the water, compared to cardinal hour of flight clock. The trailer is operated victimization radio waves and a regular drone controller, though this method acting of navigation becomes problematic atomic number 3 before long as it hits the water.

"You really can't communicate [with the drone] under water," Benyo said. "Radio signals just die, within a couple of meters. So you really can't use normal energy communications. The normal controls just won't work."

Thither are limited ways to communicate under water using ultrasound, "and we're in the cognitive process of refining that," he added. "But basically, you got to computer programme information technology, go down it free, and have IT get back to you."

Rutgers University

Researchers must currently use a cable to transmit with the drone while IT's submerged, equally radio waves break down in irrigate.

So far, most of the funding for the Naviator has come from the U.S. Navy, which hopes to use the technology for search-and-saving trading operations, placement underwater mines, and conducting at-sea fleet inspections.

But the Naviator team also sees commercial applications, much as bridge inspections, data collection, and mapping. The team is presently workings on a new design that will receive a seven-foot wingspread and be competent to carry payloads more than three pounds. Benyo predicts the Naviator will murder the commercial food market less than a class.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/410941/this-navy-funded-drone-is-at-home-in-sea-and-sky.html

Posted by: goodsonsentes.blogspot.com

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