More recently, unmanned aerial vehicles were included in the list of unique products that are produced only by orders of the military and special services. Today, the situation has changed dramatically: devices called "drones" are used in science, industry and even in everyday life. Moreover, their appearance is just the first step towards creating machines that will change our ideas about everyday life.
HEAVENLY ROBOTS
The first unmanned aerial vehicle was built by a group of thirty engineers led by the English physicist Archibald Lowe. During the First World War, the German army actively used combat airships - "zeppelins". To combat them, Lowe proposed building an aerial "torpedo" - a small airplane controlled by radio and loaded with forty kilograms of explosives. The "torpedo" was supposed to fly up to the "zeppelin" and explode nearby, piercing the shell with shrapnel and igniting the hydrogen inside. Work on the project began in 1915, but Low's group made six copies of the "torpedo" only by the spring of 1917. Full-scale tests began in the summer, but the first three flights ended in falling products. As the project costs significantly exceeded the original estimate and the war was drawing to a close,the command refused further funding.
Interestingly, to conceal the true purpose of the project, the British gave it the name "Aerial Target", which means "flying target". When unmanned aerial vehicles began to truly conquer the skies, they really were at one time only used as targets for anti-aircraft training. The first serial device of this type, the DH82B (Queen Bee), entered service with the British Air Force in 1934. His flight was remembered by the fact that the device did not turn, did not change speed - it flew like a bee drone, emitting a loud low rumble. As a result, the anti-aircraft gunners called him "drone", that is, "drone" in English.
In the United States, jargon was introduced into circulation by Admiral William Standley, who returned in 1936 from Europe, where he, in particular, observed the flights of the DH82B. In the 1960s, when jet vehicles were greatly developed, the meaning of the term "drone" changed again - for example, the American high-speed reconnaissance drone D-21 began to be called. One of them somehow did not return to the base and fell near the Baikonur cosmodrome, which led to the appearance of a similar Soviet project "Raven".
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With the development of remote control systems, the variety of unmanned aerial vehicles has grown. However, for the first time in a real combat situation, drones showed themselves at the beginning of the 21st century in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they first served for reconnaissance and target designation, and then became weapons. Moreover, the word "drone" became widespread from military jargon thanks to an article by Bob Woodward, published in the Washington Post on October 21, 2001, in which he described the famous MQ-1 (Predator) unmanned vehicle that the CIA used to hunt for Bin Laden. It looks paradoxical, but after this article, not only powerful reconnaissance or combat vehicles, but also miniature quadcopters designed for high-altitude photography began to be called drones.
The development of information technology has made it possible to significantly reduce the size of drones, and today some models look like insects. For example, the Axis Vidius serial drone, available to customers, easily fits in the palm of your hand and is controlled using a regular smartphone. Surveillance is still the main task that drones solve. For these purposes, they are used by intelligence units, special services and other power structures. In addition, the benefits of drones have been appreciated by cartographers, builders, agronomists, geologists, hydrologists, geophysicists, power engineers, railway workers, filmmakers and ordinary tourists.
As drones become cheaper and can be used for unseemly purposes, the governments of developed countries are introducing legislative measures to regulate the market and the applicability of these devices. The so-called "no-fly zones" have appeared, in which the appearance of drones is prohibited. The Russian authorities have now launched a project for a global drone control system, with testing of its prototype starting in early 2018 in the Republic of Bashkortostan.
FLYING ASSISTANTS
However, drones are not limited to surveillance. For example, they can be used as repeaters for digital communications. As you know, communication satellites are launched to great heights and are very expensive. Their advantages are that they can work for years using solar panels and make communication available even where there are no cell towers. However, the drone is much cheaper, and its modern models can also stay in the air for a long time using solar energy.
Such an aircraft, called "Aquila", is being developed by order of the well-known company Facebook. With a relatively small size, the drone has huge wings with photocells. Thanks to an economical power consumption system, it can fly for three months at an altitude of about 18 km. For data transmission, not only radio communications, but also lasers will be used. Launching dozens, and in the future hundreds of drones such as "Aquila", Mark Zuckerberg, founder and owner of Facebook, expects to spread free Internet throughout the world.
Another area of application is cargo delivery. A sufficiently powerful drone is capable of lifting tens of kilograms and delivering them by air to their destination. It is not surprising that transport companies and major retail chains were primarily interested in such drones. For example, back in 2013, Amazon announced that it was going to launch a Prime Air drone delivery system. The system is currently being tested - cargo drones developed for it are capable of delivering containers of goods up to 15 miles.
Without a doubt, the transport direction in the evolution of drones will develop, including in Russia: for example, the Aviaresheniya company, based in the Kazan Technopark Himgrad, has developed a Flyp drone with a carrying capacity of up to 180 kg and has already received an order from the authorities for production of ten copies. Other customers include the agricultural company August and the courier service Pony Express.
"SMART" ROY
Of course, most modern drones are operated by operators, but the capabilities of autonomous systems are also growing - programs are becoming more sophisticated. For example, the advanced military drone X-47B is capable of taking off from an aircraft carrier, completing a mission hundreds of kilometers from its base, and returning back without any operator involvement. Household drones cannot yet perform complex maneuvers and operations, but they are also supplied with software that allows them to remain stable in the air in bad weather and return to the owner on their own if he loses sight of the device.
Autonomy combined with mobility and diminutiveness opens up new possibilities for drones. Recently, researchers from the Robotics Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania presented to the public the smallest Piccolissimo drone to date - an asymmetric monocopter with a rotating body. With a weight of 2.5 grams, it is capable of lifting a weight of 1 gram into the air. Interestingly, the details of the drone (except for the power supply) were "printed" on a 3D printer, which drastically reduced its cost. Although a single drone of this size cannot perform any serious tasks, a swarm of such machines is supposed to be used for research and search and rescue operations in hard-to-reach spaces such as caves or abandoned structures.
As it matures, a smart swarm will gain the ability to explore its surroundings, collecting data in real time and sharing it with other swarms. They will become the "eyes" and "ears" of the worldwide information network, which will control the entire planet and the nearest outer space. It is unlikely that such control will make our life easier, but it will certainly become more comfortable.
Anton Pervushin