Exciting (Light-weighting) Opportunities in UAVs
Bob Reeve, Manufacturing Advisory
Service, MAS
Abstract
Airworthiness and safety rules change for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.
Reduced risks allow new technologies to be deployed more easily.
Size is especially important in UAVs and opportunities abound for the
creative - especially the use of lightweighting technologies, but they
must be affordable!
Size may range from the tiny indoor UAV to the lazy albatross of the
upper skies that need to soar for long periods - providing
reconnaissance or communications, reliably, for prolonged periods.
Payloads may vary from a few grams of a micro-camera to tonnes of
something a lot more lethal.
Power sources may vary from high energy chemical reactions to solar,hot
air or even the elastic beloved of aero modellers!
This is a vast range of applications - surpassing the more limited
applications and designs of the conventional MAVs that currently
dominate aerospace research.
This is a ground for developing technology and exploring the limits of
manufacture and design - an exciting opportunity of light weighting and
low cost (affordable) manufacture!