DARPA crowd sourcing for new drones

DARPA in a different approach toward development is crowd sourcing for it's next generation of miniature spy drones.

DARPA crowd sourcing for drones

I can not discern what exactly they mean when they say "perch." I figured that this meant "hover," but they go on to say that hovering would require too much battery power for the length of time they are talking about. So they actually want something that will plop itself down somewhere in hostile territory? That doesn't sound very smart to me.

I think it was the National Geographic Channel that had a program about DARPA not too long ago, and on the program they were showing these backpack recon drones, but they hovered. They were neat nonetheless, and were controlled remotely with video recording capabilities, as well as the ability to mount different units. They showed the thermal unit that was mounted, and it was used to detect buried IED's, by utilizing the difference in ground temperature and the temperature of the explosive itself.

This is a pretty cool competition. In my spare time I design stealth aircraft skins, in an amateurish way mind you, so I may take a crack at this. However, designing the entire system would be a difficult challenge that I am not sure I am up to.

I suppose hovering would be allowed while the vehicle is en-route to its location. Does anyone know for sure? If not, a person's options will be limited greatly. Is anyone going to give this an honest try? I am thinking I don't have the necessary skill set, at least to design all of the systems that would be necessary.

reply to post by JiggyPotamus


I'm pretty sure they're keen on development of something that does indeed land and sit somewhere, possibly even clinging to walls to prolong deployment time.

My thought on the prospect is to just design disposable bots, using super cheap materials. Deploy the bugger, and when done, send a signal to have itself burn out.
No big concern over capture, or loss since it's disposable and can auto toast itself, and the hassle of trying to retrieve after deployment is also mitigated.