UAV / UCAV / LAR (robotit) Uutiset ja jutut

[John Hilly]

Israelilaislennokit lentokieltoon.

IDF’s Elbit Skylark drones grounded after 2 crash in West Bank
On Monday, two Elbit Skylark drones crashed in the West Bank. The drones were recovered by IDF soldiers. In light of the incidents, all Elbit Skylark drones have been grounded.
Sep 25, 2017, 5:00PM Becca Noy

IDF drone Photo Credit: Channel 2 News

Two Elbit Skylark drones crashed Monday during IDF activities in Hebron and Bethlehem. Both of the UAVs were recovered by soldiers and no classified information was leaked from them.

However, in light of the two separate incidents, Commander of GOC Army Headquarters Major-General Kobi Barak decided to ground all Elbit Skylark drones until the initial investigations into the crashes have been completed.

In July, an Elbit Skylark drone crashed in the Gaza Strip. While the UAV was recovered by Hamas terrorists, the IDF explained that there was no cause for concern because the drone was equipped with a special system that deleted all the classified material stored on it.

http://www.jerusalemonline.com/news/politics-and-military/military/2-idf-drones-crash-in-west-bank-31325?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Hamas,+PA+to+meet+for+reconciliation+talks,+North+Korea:+"The+US+declared+war+on+our+country",+Protesters+call+for+recognition+of+Yemenite+children+affair+and+more+news+at+JerusalemOnline&utm_campaign=EveningNewsletter+-+Recurring+2017+(new)

 

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The Air Force Academy will start giving cadets more hands-on training into unmanned aerial missions with the help of new drone simulator software.

Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), an Orlando, Florida-based game and software company that also provides military training and simulation, last week announced the Academy has selected its product simulators to teach cadets the latest in virtual remotely piloted aircraft training.

BISim, along with SimCentric Technologies, a research and development company, will be providing two new interfaces to the school’s Military Strategic Studies curriculum, the company said in a release.

VBS3 will give students more than 40 virtual unmanned systems and will provide “a generic UAV interface for operation system payload sensors and weapons,” according to the release.

Within VBS3, SimCentric’s VBS Fires FST, meanwhile, will train cadets on close air support activities, such as the ability to support a wide array of munitions and firing platforms, BISim officials said.

“What we are trying to do is expose cadets to how the U.S. Air Force employs air power at the operational level,” said Lt. Col. Casey Tidgewell, head of the Academy’s remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) education, training and operations.

“The course is designed to help cadets understand and develop airmanship skills as well as understand different career paths available to them in the Air Force,” he said in the announcement.

https://www.defensetech.org/2017/09/26/new-simulator-software-boost-cadet-uav-training-time/

 

[ak.tied]

Ei suoraan (sotilaalliseen) aiheeseen, mutta Mad Skillz

 

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Ei suoraan (sotilaalliseen) aiheeseen, mutta Mad Skillz

Yleensä laitan spoiler tagin jos on aiheesta ulkona.

 

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Spoiler

Robots that can be physically reconfigured to do lots of different things are, in theory, a great way to maximize versatility while saving time and effort. In theory. The idea is that you could have a robot with a bunch of different limbs that would be arms or legs depending on what worked best at the time, but in practice, this means coming up with entirely new gaits along with a way to transition from the old gait to the new one. You could, if you had a lot of time to kill and nothing better to do, pre-compute every possible combination of gaits and transitions in advance, but who would want to do that when you could instead “create new gaits online to enable rapid deployment minutes after reconfiguration.” Okay, yeah, that may not sound super exciting, but it means you can teach a dodecapod robot to transition into a septapod robot that can carry stuff with two arms while using a third to point a camera.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton...-modular-robots-turn-legs-into-arms-on-demand

 

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Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller has said many times that he wants to equip every infantry squad with a quadcopter drone that can aid situational awareness on patrols. But there’s a chance the service won’t need to buy the drones it wants, thanks to 3D printing technology tested out by a Marine Corps task force during a recent deployment to the Middle East.

In addition executing air strikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, supporting embassy security, and providing advise-and-assist aid to Iraqi ground troops, the Marines of Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response-Central Command set up and operated a first-of-its kind 3D printing lab downrange.

The lab churned out wrenches, medical supplies, replacement parts, and at least 25 copies of “Nibbler,” a small quadcopter that can operate for 20 to 25 minutes at a stretch and be freely modified to meet Marines’ requirements.

https://www.defensetech.org/2017/09/27/inside-ripper-lab-marines-3d-print-drones-can-support-combat/

 

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Spoiler

Nostaa maasta yli oman painonsa verran rautaa.

This paper describes a novel four-limbed robot having high mobility capability in extreme environments. At disaster sites, there are various types of environments where a robot must move such as rough terrain with possibility of collapse, narrow places, stairs, vertical ladders and so forth. In this paper, first we categorized extreme environments based on three indexes: unevenness, narrowness, and inclination. To move in such extreme environments, we proposed a four-limbed robot having various locomotion styles such as bipedal/quadrupedal walking, crawling and ladder climbing. The main contribution of this paper is the concept and hardware design of the four-limbed robot. We developed a prototype of the four-limbed robot having commonly structured limbs. The number of DoF for the whole body is 29, with 7-DoFs in each limb and 1-DoF in the trunk. The robot weight is 110 kg, and the height is 1,290 mm when standing on two legs.

Spoiler: Autonomista lentoa keskellä metsää, polun päällä.

We present a micro aerial vehicle (MAV) system, built with inexpensive off-the-shelf hardware, for autonomously following trails in unstructured, outdoor environments such as forests. The system introduces a deep neural network (DNN) called TrailNet for estimating the view orientation and lateral offset of the MAV with respect to the trail center. The DNN-based controller achieves stable flight without oscillations by avoiding overconfident behavior through a loss function that includes both label smoothing and entropy reward. In addition to the TrailNet DNN, the system also utilizes vision modules for environmental awareness, including another DNN for object detection and a visual odometry component for estimating depth for the purpose of low-level obstacle detection. All vision systems run in real time on board the MAV via a Jetson TX1. We provide details on the hardware and software used, as well as implementation details. We present experiments showing the ability of our system to navigate forest trails more robustly than previous techniques, including autonomous flights of 1 km.

Spoiler

Kävelijä, joka osaa suhtautua lennosta suoraan raajojen vaihtoon, niin pois putoamiseen ilman että sen meno kärsii ollenkaan. Pikku hämähäkki ei edes pysähdy kun tutkija ottaa raajan pois ja laittaa toisen tilalle (hot swap without a delay). Ei myöskään hämmenny jos raajassa on erillaisia ominaisuuksia kuin vanhassa.

Spoiler: Sillantutkija

BRIDGE bot is a 158 g, 10.7 x 8.9 x 6.5 cm3, magnetic-wheeled robot designed to traverse and inspect steel bridges. Utilizing custom magnetic wheels, the robot is able to securely adhere to the bridge in any orientation. The body platform features flexible, multi-material legs that enable a variety of plane transitions as well as robot shape manipulation. The robot is equipped with a Cortex-M0 processor, inertial sensors, and a modular wireless radio. A camera is included to provide images for detection and evaluation of identified problems. The robot has been demonstrated moving through plane transitions from 45◦ to 340◦ as well as over obstacles up to 9.5 mm in height. Preliminary use of sensor feedback to improve plane transitions has also been demonstrated.

 

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Spoiler: Hondan proto pelastusandroidi

Two years ago at IROS 2015 in Germany, Honda R&D presented a paper on an experimental new humanoid robot designed for disaster response. This wasn’t entirely surprising, since we’d guessed that Honda had started working on a humanoid designed to be more robust, and practical, than Asimo after the Fukushima disaster. But as with most large Japanese companies, Honda does an excellent job of (almost) never communicating about the projects that it has under development. Pretty much the only sneak peeks we ever get come from research papers, and last week at IROS 2017 in Vancouver, we got the biggest look inside Honda’s humanoid robotics research and development program that we’ve had in years.

In a paper entitled “Development of Experimental Legged Robot for Inspection and Disaster Response in Plants,” roboticists from Honda R&D showed off the latest prototype of their disaster relief robot, the E2-DR. It’s strong, it’s nimble, and it can even get rained on without exploding.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton...nveils-prototype-e2dr-disaster-response-robot

 

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Spoiler: ANYmal ERL Robotit kisassa

Spoiler: Carl F - Logistiikka Lajittelu Robotti Länsinaapurista.

 

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Unmanned vehicles in ground combat units will likely first serve in resupply, transport and other logistics-based roles, said a lead Army Research Laboratory researcher.

Stuart Young, head of ARL’s Robotics Collaborative Technology Alliance project, told audience members at the Association of the U.S. Army’s Annual Meeting & Exposition that challenges for using and developing automated technology are much more complex in a combat environment.

Robots deployed with troops won’t always easily have access to the information cloud that’s available in civilian settings, and they must move on unknown terrain in areas they can’t always plan for ahead of time.

https://www.defensenews.com/news/yo...-army-is-working-on-combat-deployable-robots/

 

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[Einomies1]

Ei suoraan (sotilaalliseen) aiheeseen, mutta Mad Skillz

Pyhä sylvi toi tyyppi on taitava!

Ei varmaan lennättänyt kuin osan aikaa LOS.....

 

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Canada's transport minster has told drone operators to stay away from airports after a remotely-piloted craft bonked a passenger plane during its final approach to Jean Lesage International Airport in Québec City.

Minister Marc Garneau hasn't revealed the model of the drone, but we do know that it hit a plane operated by Skyjet Aviation, a charter outfit that despite its name operates only turboprop aircraft. The three types it operates, the King Air 100 and 200, plus the Beechcraft 1900, seat six, 10 and 19 passengers apiece.

Whichever type was struck, it came away with what Garneau described as “minor damage” and landed safely.

There's also no news of where the drone struck. As the craft landed without incident, The Register's aviation desk will assume it wasn't chopped up by the plane's propellors with attendant spray of plastic and metal.

Local media suggest that the plane was struck about 3,000m from the runway while at an altitude of 450 metres.

All concerned are therefore reminding Canuck drone operators of their obligations to fly below 90 metres and at least 5.5km away from airports, or face $C25,000 fines.

Authorities are keen to identify the drone pilot, to remind him or her of those rules. In stern language, as a drone striking a propellor or being sucked into a jet engine has the potential to cause a very nasty incident.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/16/drone_hits_commercial_passenger_plane_in_canada/

A drone photographer who took pictures of the Tornado steam engine has been given a community punishment by Essex Police in the UK – after Network Rail complained his craft was being flown too close to a railway line.

The force said in a statement that the 28-year-old man from Kirby Cross, who it declined to name, "was dealt with by means of an agreement contract with Essex Police and given a community resolution".

His actions were said to be in breach of the Air Navigation Order 2016, which is the law on how UK airspace may be used.

The man had taken photos of the Tornado steam engine and was selling them in a local shop, police said. This is not permitted unless one has permission from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to operate as a commercial drone flyer.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/10/13/essex_drone_photographer_tornado_steam_engine/

 

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Spoiler

Of all the legged robots built in labs all over the world, few inspire more awe and reverence than Boston Dynamics’ quadrupeds.

Chinese roboticist Xing Wang has long been a fan of BigDog, AlphaDog, Spot, SpotMini, and other robots that Boston Dynamics has famously introduced over the years. “Marc Raibert … is my idol,” Wang once told us about the founder and president of Boston Dynamics.

Now Wang, with funding from a Chinese angel investor, has founded his own robotics company, called Unitree Robotics and based in Hangzhou, outside Shanghai. Wang says his plan is making legged robots as popular and affordable as smartphones and drones.

Unitree’s first robot is a four-legged robodog called Laikago, which the company is announcing this week. (The name comes from Laika, the Soviet space dog, which Wang admires as a symbol of “human exploration of the unknown.”)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton...rtup-wants-to-be-the-boston-dynamics-of-china

 

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Spoiler: Simuloitu MECH ottelu

Matsi alkaa 7:15 kohdasta

In 2015, two American engineers, Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein, set out to build a giant human-piloted combat robot called Mk. II MegaBot that could drive on tank tracks and fire 3-pound projectiles. The robot was pretty cool, they thought, but who would they fight? They decided to challenge the only other giant piloted robot in the world to a duel. That robot was a 4.5-metric-ton mech known as Kuratas and built by Suidobashi Heavy Industry in Japan. The Japanese accepted the challenge. The fight was on.

The U.S. and Japan teams have since spent two years fortifying and weaponizing their robots, and now the duel will finally happen. Well, technically, it’s already happened: It appears that showing the fight live wasn’t feasible (there would be too much downtime for repairs and resets), so over the course of several days the robots battled each other at an undisclosed location in Japan, with cameras rolling to capture all the action.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/watch-the-worlds-first-giant-robot-fight

 

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Spoiler: yliääninen lennokki

 

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Scientists have invented a way to morph liquid metal into physical shapes.

Researchers at the University of Sussex and Swansea University have applied electrical charges to manipulate liquid metal into 2D shapes such as letters and a heart.

The team says the findings represent an "extremely promising" new class of materials that can be programmed to seamlessly change shape. This open up new possibilities in 'soft robotics' and shape-changing displays, the researcher say.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Liquid_metal_brings_soft_robotics_a_step_closer_999.html

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=3132272.3134132

 

[aj77]

Locust launcher toiminnassa.