Version miniature...
"At first glance it seems like a fairly routine military tech project: DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is developing a miniature unmanned air vehicle that can be carried into the field in a rucksack and sent out to a remote urban location, where it will find a spot from which to perch and transmit surveillance video.
The technology for this vulture-like “Perch and Stare” device is within reach, but DARPA has taken a rather extraordinary approach to getting the concept into production.
Rather than contracting out with domestic research institutions or defense industry companies, DARPA has extended a welcome mat to everyone around the world through an elaborately crowd-sourced competition called UAVForge, which launched last May.
In a recent update for the media, Jim McComick, a DARPA program manager with UAVForge said that “The objective is to facilitate the exchange of ideas among a loosely connected international community united through common interests and inspired by innovation and creative thought.”
He added: “We seek to lower the threshold to entry for hobbyists and citizen scientists, hoping to yield greater innovation, shorter timelines, better performance and more affordable solutions.”
Entrants are asked to design a UAV (unmanned air vehicle) that is small and light enough to carry in a rucksack. It needs to be able to take off vertically, fly two miles into an urban environment, perch somewhere for at least two hours, send back video images, and then return.
Participants can build from scratch, scavenge parts from other devices or mod out hobby-shop kits, as long as they don’t cross the line into representing a production kit as their own design."
La suite:
http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/at-first-glance-it-seems.php
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