- New stabilization system brings unmanned helicopters
to journalism, law enforcement, agriculture, utilities
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- HAIFA, Israel and NEW YORK - Piloting a helicopter can
be like busting a bucking bronco. Pilots must battle the helicopter's innate
tendency to accelerate in any direction, especially when hovering. Keeping
a remote-controlled helicopter stable is an even more difficult task that
requires expensive equipment and a ground operator with extensive training.
As a result, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been mostly limited
to the military and the movie industry.
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- Now, unmanned helicopters are about to become easy to
operate and affordable thanks to a stabilization system developed at the
entrepreneurial incubator program at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
in Haifa. With its patented mathematical formulas, this new UAV can hover
steadily for long periods while shooting quality videos, can be operated
by relatively untrained people essentially via the push of a button, and
can take off from anywhere, even the roof of a car.
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- Since the inventor, Gadi Kalisch, an electrical engineer
and remote controlled aircraft enthusiast, founded Steadicopter Ltd. in
1999, he has received inquiries from news organizations, electric power
companies, law enforcement agencies, agricultural organizations and the
military. His company has also received funding from the Israel Ministry
of Defense for a joint project with Israel Aircraft Industries, and from
private investors.
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- In UAVs, not only is stability an issue, but "all
the controls are backwards," Kalisch explains. "Right is left,
left is right. Backward is forward and vice versa." Steadicopter's
formulas take all this into account.
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- The system uses a computer, standard accelerometers,
gyroscopes to maintain proper orientation, an altimeter to determine altitude,
a compass, and conventional GPS (Global Positioning System) equipment like
that used in automobile on-board navigation systems which receive signals
from satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
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- "We don't have to use hundred-thousand-dollar equipment
because the algorithms [mathematical formulas] are very strong," says
Kalisch, who has been flying the Steadicopter system on a hobbyist's five-foot-long
helicopter. Installing the Steadicopter system on larger, more commercially
practical helicopters will be easy, he says, since larger helicopters are
easier to stabilize than smaller ones, which tend to react more to weather
conditions.
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- The first commercial version, which will be ready within
a year, is a hobby helicopter about 7.5-feet-long and some 30 pounds.
It will carry up to 40 pounds of video equipment and will sell for approximately
$125,000, depending on the electronic components installed. This is a fraction
of the $1 million current UAVs cost.
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- "We are focusing on five applications," said
Kalisch. One will turn reporters into virtual Supermen. Though they won't
be able to jump tall buildings in a single bound, the Steadicopter will
have that capability, taking off from the roof of a car and giving them
real-time video access to hard-to-reach events.
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- Steadicopter may also be used in precision spraying of
crops. Conventional ground-based equipment can identify vegetation, but
cannot distinguish between food crops and other vegetation. Aerial pictures
of fields taken with a multi-spectrum camera mounted on a Steadicopter
will distinguish between crops and other vegetation. This information
will be relayed to ground-based spraying equipment, which can direct the
spray only at the crops, thus reducing the amount of chemicals, meeting
increasingly stringent environmental standards and cutting costs.
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- Law enforcement agencies can make similar use of the
Steadicopter, while electric utilities have shown an interest in launching
infrared cameras to check for weaknesses in high-power lines. Militarily,
the Steadicopter, which can attain altitudes of 10,000 feet but is hard
to detect at 150 feet, can be used for surveillance.
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- Eventually Kalisch sees the Steadicopter system being
installed in manned helicopters as well, making it easier for pilots to
fly their unstable charges. Some manned military helicopters have stabilization
systems that Kalisch claims do less than his system for more money.
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- The Technion has been a world leader in the development
of UAVs. The Technion Entrepreneurial Incubator Company, which supports
Steadicopter and other start-up companies, is Israel's oldest, largest
and most successful incubator company, with about 56 companies spun off,
some already on U.S. stock markets.
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- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-07/ats-nss072601.php
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