Flight tests revealed some of the potential problems, most of which were associated with operating the drone rather than the printing itself, Jaeger said. 'Even with a small amount of wind, something this small will get buffeted around,' he said. They also had to figure out the logistics of launching a drone from a ship, getting it back
On a ship you have more than cross winds, you have wind coming up the sides and the acceleration across the deck, etc. I don't think a battery powered drone, even with enough control surfaces and mass, would have much flight time.
I play with quadcopters a lot. Even in 20 km/h wind, a high performance one (meaning not a Phantom or something) with no useful features like camera gimbals, etc, will have its battery life at least cut in half, down from ~15 minutes to 5-7 minutes.
However, if they used fixed wing drones, the high airspeeds would not matter as much. Recovery could be achieved by hanging a net off the side of the ship and flying the drone right into the net. Obviously this only works for modest size drones, as there is a
Uncontrollable? (Score:1)
Flight tests revealed some of the potential problems, most of which were associated with operating the drone rather than the printing itself, Jaeger said. 'Even with a small amount of wind, something this small will get buffeted around,' he said. They also had to figure out the logistics of launching a drone from a ship, getting it back
Shouldn't they be fixing this first?
Took years for the V-22 Osprey to work right (Score:1)
Re: (Score:0)
I play with quadcopters a lot. Even in 20 km/h wind, a high performance one (meaning not a Phantom or something) with no useful features like camera gimbals, etc, will have its battery life at least cut in half, down from ~15 minutes to 5-7 minutes.
However, if they used fixed wing drones, the high airspeeds would not matter as much. Recovery could be achieved by hanging a net off the side of the ship and flying the drone right into the net. Obviously this only works for modest size drones, as there is a