[Tyler]

US-Asian Micro Air Vehicle Event This Week
     

The less than concisely named 1st
US-Asian Demonstration & Assessment of Micro-Aerial & Unmanned Ground
Vehicle Technology event is this week in Agra, India. The main
purpose of the event is to showcast COTS-based Micro Air Vehicle (MAV)
and Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) robots. There will be static judging
of the robots as well as live demonstrations. According to
a Nature
News article, the MAV teams will be competing for up to $600,000US
in funding. The maximum size for flying robots in the event is 30 cm.
The article notes that while some teams try to "shrink" traditional
aircraft to this size, they are at a disadvantage due to air turbulence.
The best results are from robots based on birds and insects. One robot
that will be competing is RoboSwift, which we reported
on last year. You can catch video of the RoboSwift
in action on YouTube.
   

http://robots.net/article/2493.html