10-06-2017, 07:02 AM
electronic flying spy robot
Is this a mosquito?
No. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and a microphone. It can land on you, and it may have the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID tracking nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through an open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you take it in your home.
Origins: One of the current areas of research reportedly being undertaken in the scientific/military field is the development of micro air vehicles (MAVs), tiny flying objects intended to go places that cannot be (safely) reached by humans or other types of equipment. One of the primary military applications envisioned for MAVs is the gathering of intelligence (through the surreptitious use of cameras, microphones, or other types of sensors); among the more extreme applications posited for such devices is that they may eventually be used as "swarm weapons" which could be launched en masse against enemy forces.
Some efforts in MAV research have involved trying to mimic birds or flying insects to achieve flight capabilities not attainable through other means of aerial propulsion. In 2007 a bug-like MAV model with a 3-cm wingspan was displayed at a robotics conference, in 2008 the U.S. Air Force released a simulated video showing MAVs about the size of bumblebees, and in 2012 engineers at Johns Hopkins University were studying the flight of butterflies to "help small airborne robots mimic these maneuvers."
The specific mosquito-like object pictured above is, however, just a conceptual mock-up of a design for a MAV, not a photograph of an actual working device "already in production." And although taking DNA samples or inserting micro-RFID tracking devices under the skin of people are MAV applications that may some day be possible, such possibilities currently appear to be speculative fiction rather than reality.
Some have claimed the U.S. government has not only researched and developed insect-like MAVs, but for several years has been furtively employing them for domestic surveillance purposes:
The US government has been accused of secretly developing robotic insect spies amid reports of bizarre flying objects hovering in the air above anti-war protests.
No government agency has admitted to developing insect-size spy drones but various official and private organisations have admitted that they are trying.
But official protestations of innocence have failed to kill speculation of government involvement after a handful of sightings of the objects at political events in New York and Washington.
Vanessa Alarcon, a university student who was working at an anti-war rally in the American capital [in September 2007], told the Washington Post: "I heard someone say, 'Oh my God, look at those.'
"I look up and I'm like, 'What the hell is that?'. They looked like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects."
Bernard Crane, a lawyer who was at the same event, said he had "never seen anything like it in my life". He added: "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical or is that alive?'"
The incident has similarities with an alleged sighting at the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York when one peace march participant described on the internet seeing "a jet-black dragonfly hovering about 10 feet off the ground, precisely in the middle of 7th Avenue".
Entomologists suggest that the objects are indeed dragonflies. Jerry Louton, an expert at the National Museum of Natural History, said Washington was home to large, impressively-decorated dragonflies that "can knock your socks off".
the technical obstacles involved in creating flying insect-sized robots have yet to be overcome:
The technical challenges of creating robotic insects are daunting, and most experts doubt that fully working models exist yet. "If you find something, let me know," said Gary Anderson of the Defense Department's Rapid Reaction Technology Office.
Getting from bird size to insect size is not a simple matter of making everything smaller.
"You can't make a conventional robot of metal and ball bearings and just shrink the design down," said Ronald Fearing, a roboticist at the University of California at Berkeley. For one thing, the rules of aerodynamics change at very tiny scales and require wings that flap in precise ways a huge engineering challenge. Scientists have only recently come to understand how insects fly.
Even if the technical hurdles are overcome, insect-size fliers will always be risky investments. "They can get eaten by a bird, they can get caught in a spider web," Professor Fearing said.
Abstract :
The goal of Flying and Spy Robot project is to create a small, robust and highly manoeuvrable autonomous flying robot that can be used both indoors and outdoors under any weather conditions. Currently, similar platforms are controlled at low frequencies due to hardware and software limitations. This causes uncertainty in position control and unstable behaviour during fast manoeuvres. Our flying platform offers a 40 MHz control frequency and motor update rate, in combination with powerful brush-less DC motors in a light-weight package. Its robust performance is achieved by using simple but reliable highly optimized algorithms. The robot is small, light, and can carry payloads of up to 340g.
We believe that the key to achieving this goal is to build minimalist platforms that are light-weight and controllable at very high frequencies, (e.g. 40 MHz). Control at very high frequencies enables very fast response to changing environmental conditions such as strong, choppy winds, and also allows extreme acrobatic manoeuvres. The challenges to achieving this kind of control are both on the hardware and the software front. From a hardware point of view we need light-weight low-cost Inertial Measurement Units (I MU) capable of fast responses. From a software point of view, robust control algorithms that are tightly coupled to the hardware are needed. In this paper we describe a 1 rotor autonomous robot we developed in response to these challenges.
One of the main design goals was to obtain a high controlling frequency of 40 MHz throughout the system. To support this, our platform features a custom built on board high-speed sensing system which consists of three gyroscopes to give relative measurements for the robot s angles. High control frequency precludes the use of commercially available brush-less motor controllers, such as those found in model aircraft, as they only allow motor speed update rates of 40 MHz. We designed a new brush-less controller capable of a 40MHz update rate with an HTI2E interface. This controller has very low dead times and supports very dynamic movements. Intensive manual acrobatic flights with loops, flips, spins, sharp turns and combined manoeuvres proofed the stability of the controller in extreme situations. Having such a high control frequency allows us to create an extremely stable platform, even with payloads of up to 340gm. Many applications for such a platform exist. The outstanding stability of the platform makes the integration of on board and off board position tracking system possible. At the end of this paper we demonstrate the performance of the system using an external motion tracking system to provide closed loop position control. Cameras mounted on the platform also benefit from a stable video on TV.
There is also window based software for PC interface. That PC is connected via RS232 to the circuit. This software is based on visual basic 6. The software has to run on PC. This software sends the commands to the circuit according to user wants and circuit transmits it through transmitter after encoding it. There is a receiver attached to the aircraft which receives that command and operates accordingly.
Working :
There is window based software for PC interface, which controls the Flying robot. The snap shot of this software is shown below. There is a circuit which is connected to the PC through RS 232 cable. This circuit has a MAX 232 IC which receives the data from PC and transfers it to the micro controller AT89S52. The controller sends the signal to the ULN2003 IC (a relay driver IC) according to the command receive from PC. This relay driver IC operates the all 8 relays for transmitting the respected command to the Flying Robot. There is a receiver in the robot which receives that commands and move according to them. A camera is also attached with the flying robot to capture the video and transmit to the user for viewing.
There are separate buttons for left, right and landing in this window based software. User can increase or decrease the speed of the flying robot by using this software.