D-Dalus: Radical new flying machine may replace helicopters?

It can take off vertically, hover, rotate on a dime, fly in reverse and thrust down to nail a landing a moving target and, it can do all of this at jet-like speed and without any loud chopping noise.

What’s surprising is that the D-Dalus doesn’t have fixed wings or a standard rotor engine and more closely resembles a lawn mower than an aircraft.

It hovers using an innovative flight technology that may someday allow it supplant helicopters as the ultimate in aerial maneuverability.

Helicopters have long been deployed in a wide range of military and police operations. Yet, for just as long, they’ve been beset with a fair number of drawbacks. The same design principles that allows them to hover also limits their forward flying speed. The loud rotor engines also makes them impractical for reconnaissance missions.

IAT21, the Austrian Innovative Aeronautical Technology research company which developed the D-Dalus, claims their invention is a potential game-changer because it’s designed to rectify all these concerns. It’s ultra-quiet, works swimmingly in harsh weather conditions and requires much less maintenance.

The aircraft can enter buildings through windows and comes equipped with a sense-and-avoid system, which means it can navigate within tight spots and close to walls. Such versatility makes it ideal for search-and-rescue operations or as a surveillance drone.

The aircraft’s differs in that it generates propulsion using four contra-rotating turbines spinning at speeds upwards of 2,200 rpm. But the key to its incredibly nimble maneuvering is the turbines ability to be adjusted to generate thrust at different angles around the three axes.

A series of built-in computer algorithms take the guesswork out of how to reposition the blades so that in-air tricks, like glue-down landings, can be easily executed using a joystick.

Currently, the D-Dalus is marketed as a spy-drone. But the company plans to scale up the technology so that it can handle heavier payloads and so that it can someday be commissioned as a passenger vehicle.

According to the company website: “In trials to date D-DALUS has met the performance criteria placed upon it and appears to be scalable, becoming more efficient and less complex as it increases in size.”

Right now, the biggest version can only lift a payload of 70kg, although IAT21 is now working with the UK's Cranfield University on a larger, more powerful version.

Photo: IAT21

Toyota develop Brain-Operated Wheelchair

Steampunked Damnation!

Jake Hildebrandt's Steampunked Damnation

Commissioned to kick off the debut of the western-style shooter game Damnation by Blue Omega Entertainment and Codemasters, this steampunk case mod was built by Jake Hildebrandt. The mod packs an impressive Intel Core i7 processor, 12GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 1TB hard drive.

I'll bet you wish you could take this mod home. Well, guess what: The PC is being given away in a contest open to residents of the United States and Canada. The entry deadline is June 19, 2009. Destructoid has the contest details.And if you're not familiar with this Western subgenre, you can read a full explanation of steampunk.

Photo: Jake Hildebrandt, via Flickr

Horse Head Nebula - New vision

The Horse-Head Nebula

This photograph capturing light 1500 years old was taken by pioneering photographer and astronomer David Malin (Image: David Malin)

Every astronomy buff is familiar with the Horsehead nebula in the constellation Orion - a dark, dense molecular cloud in the shape of an equine head and neck, silhouetted against the fiery light of ionised hydrogen gas. The optical effect is completed by the less often appreciated "mane" behind the horse's head (pictured left).

The mane is a cloud of cold gas, mostly hydrogen, that is fluorescing. Since this fluorescence is red, David Malin used a red filter to take this photograph. He then applied "unsharp masking" which, belying its name, increases image sharpness by bringing forth features that are otherwise too faint to see. The 1500-year-old light from the nebula was collected using the Anglo-Australian Telescope in New South Wales, Australia.

Malin's innovative techniques and extraordinarily long exposure times - some as long as an hour - have created images of galaxies and nebulae that reveal their hidden details, and have furthered our understanding of the universe. He has helped identify two new types of galaxies - shell and proto-galaxies - among the faintest objects ever detected by a ground-based telescope.

A more familiar representation of the Horsehead Nebula