Northrop Grumman, Cassidian run Euro Hawk UAV through its first full test flight (video)
Europe isn’t quite as firmly on the bleeding edge of UAVs as the US. Northrop Grumman and EADS-run Cassidian just brought the continent one step closer through the first full test flight of Euro Hawk. A new take on the Global Hawk HALE with a new mission system from Cassidian, it should be the continent’s first military UAV that mates both long flight durations with high altitude: the two partners expect Euro Hawk to collect strategic intelligence from up to 60,000 feet and for as long as 30 hours before it needs to touch down. There’s more testing to go before active service begins — the initial flight only lasted eight hours, for example — but the unmanned flyer should eventually keep watch over German troops and territories well past the limits of human endurance.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
Source: Cassidian
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Recon Instruments offers Flight HUD goggles for wingsuit pilots and skydivers
Recon Instruments has decided to take its wares off the slopes and into the air, provided enough people bite. The Flight HUD is built around the same core as its ski goggles, but has been tweaked to offer information more relevant to skydivers, base jumpers and wingsuit pilots. The tiny LCD just below the field of vision displays speed, altitude and glide ratio in real time. Rather than simply guess how fast they’re going, adrenaline junkies will be able to see accurate data in the moment and make the appropriate adjustments. Obviously, this is a rather niche market, so Recon Instruments has set a goal: 250 pre-orders to trigger a production run. The early birds can pick up a Flight HUD for $299, while every order placed after the initial 250 will cost $349. To get a run down of the proposed product from renowned aerial daredevil Jeb Corliss check out he video after the break.
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Filed under: Wearables
Recon Instruments offers Flight HUD goggles for wingsuit pilots and skydivers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Leave a commentGoogle optimizes Flight Search for tablets, makes booking trips easier
It feels like it was only yesterday that we were praising Google for giving us access to a plethora of handy, everyday tools — oh wait, it was yesterday. At any rate, today the folks from Mountain View are back with more travel-friendly software for you to enjoy, announcing that its useful Flight Search service is now fully-optimized for use with, as Google points out, tablets such as its own Nexus 7 and, naturally, Cupertino’s iPad. Jet-setters can see the changes now by simply hitting the Flights link below, and with the dearest holidays just around the corner, now is probably a good time to make use of that “lowest fare” tool.
Filed under: Tablets, Transportation, Software, Google
Google optimizes Flight Search for tablets, makes booking trips easier originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 Sep 2012 17:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Boeing Phantom Eye takes first flight towards unmanned marathon espionage (video)
Boeing could’ve aimed a little higher for the Phantom Eye’s first successful test flight. And by that, we mean the addition of one Billy Zane in a form-fitting purple leotard fending off baddies as the plane taxied the runway. None of that happened because, well, the aerospace brainiacs behind this unmanned bulbous beauty tend to err on the side of sense, not showy drama. Tant pis. Missed opportunity for ostentatious absurdity aside, the engineering outfit did manage to log in a near-perfect round trip for the hydrogen-powered spycraft, reaching an altitude of 4,080-ft after its early morning take off from Edwards Air Force Base on the first of the month. The still in-development vessel’s return to terra firma wasn’t without hiccups, as it did sustain minor damage to its landing gear. With further refinements, though, engineers hope to push the autonomous plane even further, prolonging the duration of the flight to an eventual four days and doing so without the need for refueling (or tending to humans). It’s an obvious leap forward for cloak-and-dagger government interests, but really, it’s all about the recovery of magic skulls. Right? Right. Check out the video after the break.
Continue reading Boeing Phantom Eye takes first flight towards unmanned marathon espionage (video)
Boeing Phantom Eye takes first flight towards unmanned marathon espionage (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Space Shuttle Discovery salutes Washington on historic final flight
As historic flights go, this has to be right up there with the best of ‘em. Space Shuttle Discovery performed a final fly-by over the capital, and created a trail of excited spotters as it did so. Perched atop a Boeing 747, the iconic craft was flying at a relatively low 1,500 feet according to NASA. Pictures of the voyage have been popping up on social media and image sharing sites as it headed in from the west, before coming to its final resting place at a special off-shoot of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport. Have you spotted Discovery? Be sure to add links in the comments if you do.
[Image credit: NASA]
Space Shuttle Discovery salutes Washington on historic final flight originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Leave a commentF-Light by Paul Coudamy
French designer Paul Coudamy has sent us images of his F-Light project, a ceiling/light made of discarded Airbus windows.
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Description from the designer:
After having spent 20 years flying at 1000 km/h 10 km high above the ground, liners at the end of their life-cycle are left rusting at the far end of airport runways. These marvels of engineering with their ultra functional curves resulting from uncompromising technical research, are diverted from their original function in order to be integrated in our daily lives, thus offering them a second life.
The F-Light project is a diversion of the inner walls and windows of an Airbus 300. Its curves, windows and silvery isolation recycle the vocabulary of aeronautics to transform it into an unusual and functional light structure.
These walls are fitted together to create a « luminous ceiling » forming a shell in levitation. This dome delineates the space and offers a special intimacy beneath it. The system can be adjusted and offers unlimited variations : the panels can be put together in a row to suit the desired dimension.
The windows lighting offers circles of light which stand out against the panels and diffuse the light on the whole surface. A second indirect lighting set on the structure is reflected by the original isolating silvery material and enhances the feeling of levitation of F-Light.
Visit Paul Coudamy’s website – here.
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Human Rights Logo Takes Flight
In early May, the call for entries for A Logo for Human Rights (LHR), a “global creative online competition with cash prizes and open to everyone,” was announced. The goal? To “create a human rights logo ‘by people for people’, thus making a contribution towards the global spread and implementation of human rights with the support of a large public.” The process was your typical contest malarkey: People design, people upload, people vote on uploaded logos, designers e-mail friends and family to vote for their logos, participants complain about the voting process, the top 100 vote getters get presented to the jury (Spiekermann! Ai WeiWie! Jimmy Wales! Jimmy Carter!) and the “experts” (No! Idea! Who! They! Are!), the jurors select their own favorite ten logos, of those top vote getters ten finalists are presented again for online public voting, participants complain about the selection process, finalists designers e-mail friends and family to vote for their logos, a winner is announced. On Friday, LHR announced that Serbian designer Predrag Stakic had been selected as the winner from over 15,000 submissions.
The ten finalists. You can click through their concepts here.
Winner, original submission here.
“You talkin’ to me?” Yes, you, you are holding the logo wrong.
Predrag’s concept and rationalization.
What do you know? The result is not bad. It’s easy to mock it or denounce it as the offspring of the evil process of a contest, but if you look at the two concept images above — the kids drawing their hands not that much more difficult than doing a handprint turkey and the image of protesters holding their open hand in the air — the logo has the potential to find lasting power. There is something weird about the way the thumb breaks into the dove and the dove has some mighty big feathers, but as a simple mark that could be adopted by a lot of people it works remarkably well. But it’s all potential and maybes right now with this logo — its real success depends on whether people across the world use it.
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Iceland’s crowdsourced constitution submitted for approval, Nyan Cat takes flight over Reykjavik
A committee of 25 Icelanders submitted the first draft of a rewritten constitution to the country’s parliamentary speaker Friday, and despite our recommendations, Rebecca Black was conspicuously absent from the proceedings. The democratic experiment bravely asked citizens to log on to Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter to engage with the committee in a discussion about the nation’s future. While the project’s Facebook page played host to pleads for free ice cream and more volcanoes, the constitution’s creators managed to stay on task, focusing on issues of decentralization and transparency in government. The draft is slated for review beginning October 1st.
Iceland’s crowdsourced constitution submitted for approval, Nyan Cat takes flight over Reykjavik originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 07:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Leave a commentNASA lander prototype ditches the manpower for an autonomous flight (video)
Hear that? Those were the giddy giggles of some very happy scientists down at NASA’s Alabama-based Marshall Space Flight Center. Besting its previous June record for autonomous flight, this prototype robotic lander hovered for nearly half a minute at a height of seven feet before parking itself safely on the ground. Conceived as a joint project between NASA, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, the intelligent bot is slated to go where its parachuting, aero-braking cousins can’t — like the Moon, or an asteroid. Future tests are on deck for the self-propelled lander to hover up to one hundred feet over the short span of a minute — no doubt its current feat is pretty neat, but we wouldn’t want to be the unsuspecting dolt who walked under it without his infrared goggles on.
NASA lander prototype ditches the manpower for an autonomous flight (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Jun 2011 15:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Leave a commentSolar Impulse completes first solar-powered international flight, Captain Piccard returns to earth
We’re big fans of charming, ungainly Solar Impulse, and of Captain Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg’s quest to circumnavigate the globe in a solar-powered plane. In case you missed the live stream: the Swiss flier just got a little closer to that goal by completing its first international flight, taking off near Berne, Switzerland and landing in Brussels, Belgium, just under 13 hours later. That’s half the flight time of an earlier test, in which the craft’s 200-foot wingspan, covered with 12,000 photovoltaic solar cells, kept it aloft for 26 hours. Of course, a controlled test flight is one thing — making solar-powered flight commercially viable means proving your plane can successfully navigate busy airspace. To see Solar Impulse come in for a smooth landing, peep the video after the break.
Solar Impulse completes first solar-powered international flight, Captain Piccard returns to earth originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 May 2011 17:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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