Palm-Size Spy Planes

Abstract

This article discusses that today’s squad leader must still risk troops to scout out what lies over the next hill, beyond the next tree line, or inside the next building. The Department of Defense is trying to help ground troops at the platoon, company, or brigade level with this crucial task by giving them tiny spy planes, called micro aerial vehicles (MAVs), to search the local terrain. Planners at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) envision equipping small combat units with their own “organic” intelligence assets that can locate and monitor possible threats. DARPA planners define a MAV as semiautonomous airborne vehicles, measuring less than 6 inches in any dimension and weighing about 4 ounces that can accomplish a useful military mission at an affordable cost. The most likely parameters to sense for MAV stabilization are inertial angular rate, differential and absolute pressure, acceleration, and the Earth’s magnetic and electrostatic fields; optical sensing could be used for angular position and rate stabilization. Developing useful micro aerial vehicles is going to be a severe design engineering challenge.