Cardboard drones running open source flight software take off in Ukraine and beyond An Australian engineering company has created a cardboard drone that runs on open source software, standard hardware, and can be assembled and flown with no prior experience. The Corvo Precision Payload Delivery System (PPDS) costs less than $3,500 apiece, a price made possible by the craft's use of FOSS and commercial-off-the …
I wonder if it comes in two packs? The flatpack cardboard, and the electronics/motors/batteries?
I can see situations where removing the electronics from an airframe which is full of holes, has had a hard landing, or just plain too many flights through rain and has gone soggy, makes a lot of sense - and they already point out you can mix and match parts. The cost of the cardboard should be effectively two tenths of bugger all.
"The cost of the cardboard should be effectively two tenths of bugger all."
True. But how much of the cost is the cardboard bits replacing and saving if they'd used something more robust in the first place? £3,500 still seems like quite a lot for a drone with an estimates service life of only 20 missions[*]
[*] that may even be optimistic in a war zone, but they are also targetting emergency responders too.
There's likely a lot of profit margin in that $3500. But it's not new idea. Back in the late 70s I built a cardboard RC biplane from plans in a magazine, The plane itself was essentially free having built it from free cardboard from a refrigerator box and some scrap wood. The only cost was the engine and rc system.
Who the hell downvoted that? Likely a person who is new to ElReg...
Search for Paper Aircraft Released In Space by ElReg's SPB. As an Austrian politician once told a journalist "lernen's a bisserl Geschichte, Herr Reporter, dann werden's sehen, wie sich das [...] damals entwickelt hat." (learn some history, Mr journalist, then you will see how things developed back then)...
Well Ukraine has form with the flat packs. They built a ton of cardboard Himar units that Russia kept wasting their precision missiles on trying to destroy.
One US official was quoted as saying Russia had claimed to destroy more Himars than we've actually sent. But they haven't actually hit a single one so far...
Well Ukraine has form with the flat packs. They built a ton of cardboard Himar units that Russia kept wasting their precision missiles on trying to destroy.
Nothing new, and a darned good technique.
This page lists some, but only in overview. Operation Bertram is described in much more detail on Wikipedia and is well worth a read - using the skills of a film maker and stage illusionist to deceive the enemy.
There is a channel on YouTube called Flite Test. https://www.youtube.com/@FliteTest . Their specialty is making foamboard RC planes - some of which are amazingly improbable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720HKxvyTEg . But from simplest on up, they make the plans https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=flite+test+plans available, and demonstrate putting them together.
the flight control gear is another matter: they set up for RC, often with on-board cameras. Drone hardware and software is probably the expensive part.
When we were kids, we would -- one at a time -- fly kites with TWO strings. Yanking the second string released a lightweight toy which helicoptered slowly down like a maple tree seed. Our goal was to hit as close as possible to the bull's-eye target we'd scratched into the gravel below.
It's a bit better than that as you can aim this one via GPS. V1s were not exactly known for their targeting precision.
My main worry about these things is that we have seen an uptick in idiots who think it's a good idea to drive into a crowd with a car, bomb an office because they feel their chosen deity was insulted or empty clips of ammo into schools with little children, and this is all too easily converted into something furthering such twisted aims.
Nice idea from a technical perspective, but possible problematic deployments ahead.
Three kilos of whatever wouldn't make any difference to any power station and nuclear ones are even tougher than the rest. They also have GPS exclusion zones that nearly all manufacturers adhere to. This is one of the reasons why none of the Russian missile attacks have been at any of Ukraine's nuclear power stations. It's easier to go after control systems or their own power supplies: if it can't run the cooling… But, also, blowing up nuclear power stations can have lots of very nasty and long-lasting unintended consequences. The explosion itself would be very local but the fallout would be anything but. Hence, the decision to harden them against things like plane crashes as only ideological zealots certain of their ticket to paradise would tend to go after them.
I am surprised there wasn't a length of bailing twine included :)
With a 3 kg payload and accurate autonomous navigation enough of these beasties could inflict serious damage.
The accurate navigation wasn't the V1's forte. (Or the V2's either.)
Australia has some form in producing cheap effective munitions - the Owen submachine gun.
If one of these things were dropping something nasty on top of my position I don't think I would care much if it were GPL or CC-0 licensed but I might if it came with an Oracle licence as I would prefer not to have to pay Larry for the privilege of being blown to bits.
Unfortunately the chief child-murdering genocidal monster is safely ensconced many miles beyond its range. It's more likely to kill folks he sent unwillingly to the front who have been normalised to hate and massacre their former brothers-in-arms by the monstrous culture he created.
Plus taking out a tank or other pieces of ordnance and logistics is really the objective in a war. Without those the soldier is virtually naked in a snowstorm.
SPAD: Simple Plastic Airplane Design: https://spadtothebone.org/.
PCV downspout section for the body, corrugated plastic for the wings (why does Corvo use cardboard?) Put the engine and electronics on a narrow wood slat and slide it into the body. Secure components with rubber bands. At RC dogfight events, back in the air in 10 minutes after a prang. Airframe that's sturdy, long-lasting, and cheap, cheap, cheap. Or even free with a little dumpster diving around sign shops and residential construction.
The density of Schedule 40 PVC is about 1.4 g/cm^3, and of corrugated cardboard about 0.2 g/cm^3. A factor of 7 in the weight of the airframe might be a reason.
Cardboard is also really easy to source and ship. And while it's combustible, it doesn't release toxic fumes when it burns, which PVC does.
Not saying PVC isn't a good choice for some use cases, but in this one I believe I understand why Corvo went with cardboard.
> If you're concerned about some toxic fumes from a bomb's delivery system, you have your priorities in the wrong order.
Not necessarily. Now that Iraq is a stable and prosperous democracy and our economic and political partner - it's a real problem that everywhere we would want to build iPhone factories is covered in toxic uranium rounds
There's a significant community of "makers" and model airplane fans who make model airplanes from cardboard and cheap foamboard, so the design requirements and useful tricks and methods to make a functional small airframe are established and available. Also, the use of cardboard makes it easy to repair and modify as mentioned in the article using locally available and inexpensive materials.
So cardboard is a really good design choice to enhance capability, reduce costs, and maximize availability.
Corrugated cardboard is light and strong - a few years back a cycle helmet was made out of readily available corrugated cardboard and not only was lighter than equivalent composite plastic cycle helmets but also gave significantly better protection. The design meant it was possible to make a bespoke helmet at the equivalent to a Photo Booth, which the user needed only to assemble from the laser cut flat pack cardboard, the main downside was its vulnerability to water (rain and sweat).
I see this being similarly useful, especially if the airframe can be DIY’d from locally sourced cardboard and the electronics can be readily reused.
> especially if the airframe can be DIY’d from locally sourced cardboard and the electronics can be readily reused.
But I suspect this can be solved by requiring aerospace grade cardboard from an approved aerospace qualified supplier and assembled by a certified aerospace cardboard folding engineer - we'll soon have it upto a price that doesn't challenge any existing market players
The reason bicycle helmets were made with a hard shell was a legislated standard.
When the first legislated standards for bicycle helmets were introduced, they introduced a requirement for "intrusion protection", probably inherited from the motor cycle standard. It required the helmet to protect against pointy objects.
The old design was open, to allow cooling, and the new standards have reduced or removed the requirement. I've still got an old open bar 'helmet' from my dad, and I've got a new 'helmet' that is just expanded foam.
I fly model sailplanes for a hobby and some of the very best examples of high performance sailplanes, both in terms of aerodynamic performance and advanced construction techniques, are from "Vladimir's Model", a company based in Kharkov, Ukraine. They're not particularly cheap but they actually retail for rather less than the $3500 the flatpack costs.
Since a drone is just a model aircraft with a payload I'd guess that they're already being made. Cardboard is probably more stealthy than spun carbon fiber but the electronics is just readily available components and software.
Amazon (cardboard) and Ikea (flatpackery) could combine and make one for much less.
And you wouldn't need it to come with a tablet. Any used one off ebay would do.
How long before the US government ban this? They don't seem to be too keen on landing any punches on Putin, Russian MPs or Russian territory.
The sans-culottes had a go at Macron's favourite posh restaurant the other day, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are bans for all aspects of this tech breaking out across bits of Europe with unpopular governments, real soon. That will include us of course.
The US government hasn't been keen on attacks in Russian territory that are traceable back to US-supplied weapons, because of the whole "maybe starting WWIII" problem. If Ukraine wants to develop their own drone capability, though, I don't see the US interfering.
"Amazon (cardboard) and Ikea (flatpackery) could combine and make one for much less."
But, but, but, Amazon already have form for delivering packages by drone. It'd be easier just to order the payload to the required "address" and let Amazon supply the drone. They may charge an additional shipping and handling fee if the drone doesn't return though.
100km range. Flies a predetermined course. 3kg payload. All that's missing is a terminal guidance system and there's probably something on Amazon or eBay that can handle that.
Sounds to me like everyman's cruise missile.
You young folks sure will be living in exciting times.
An issue that arose when we were doing the PARIS and LOHAN stuff was that by agreement, domestic GPS receiver chips are designed not to work if they're moving too high and too fast, precisely to avoid their use in guided/cruise missile scenarios.
Since we needed one that would work at high altitude (though low speed) we had to find a chip where the maker had actually used 'AND' instead of 'OR' in their logic, which it seemed at the time many did.
I think the idea of a homemade one was discussed in 'The Moon Goddess and the Son' by Donald Kingsbury. I seem to remember an engineering students project turning a truck turbocharger into a radial compressor jet engine from around the same time. Probably all you'd need to add besides control actuators is a mobile phone, these days.
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