Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or UAVs are all the rage and what started out as a military endeavor as drones decades ago is now a technology which can be used for just about anything. The newest thing in UAVs is miniaturization, that is to say building UAVs, which are smaller than radio controlled model aircraft. In fact so small that they could fly along side a hummingbird or dragon fly and make you do a double take. They call these tiny UAVs; Micro-Air Vehicles or MAVs. If you look at a Lady Bug sometime you will find that it is a really unique design. It is a little round bug most of the time then extends its wings to fly. What if we designed a Lady Bug Micro-Air vehicle and copied natures design? There are many advantages to launching a Lady Bug shaped MAV. By using the design of the Lady Bug which nature developed over some 200-million years or so, we can allow the MAV to be protected by its own wings. I propose we launch Lady Bug shaped MAV like the old wide mouth WWII vintage flare guns. Send them up and as the friction of the air heats up the wings they start to open and by the time the Lady Bug bullet shape reaches the top of the arch of its trajectory, the wings pop open and it flies away already at altitude. Then it can fly around, give you a birds eye view pick a target and then ask the shooter to press Y or N on their little handheld PDA device like a 1.5 way old Alphanumeric Pager. Y for yes, kill that target or N for no, keep searching for a new target. Once it is given the green light to attack target it will simply fly over to the target and then explode. This could be a very good innovation for our troops to protect them from the enemy. Think on this. |
