A miniature drone – Visual Intelligence at 17g

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Since last March, the U.S. army is conducting experiments with a drone that looks like Q himself made for agent 007. If the regular drone is a small UAV, then this one is practically miniature, as it is small enough to fit into your pocket. The Black Hornet PD-100 is so small that it weighs only 17g and measures about 10cm in length and 2.5cm in height. It’s also not restricted to day-light missions since it’s equipped with three thermal night-vision camers. Its reception range is almost 2km and can stay up in the air for 25 mintues, reaching the speed of  35km/h.

This miniature drone, made by Prox Dynamics, is safe for military use and against leaking information gathered in case of a crash beyond enemy lines, since no recordings are saved on the platform, but are transfered directly to the mother-base. An extra security measure in case of a malfunction is the ability to return autonomously to base in case connection is lost through GPS coordinates programmed into it in advance. This also allows the Hornet to carry out missions without real time operation guidance, since a route can be programmed in advance to be left to carry out on its own.

The PD-100 model of the Black Hornet, which was purchased to be used by the U.S. army is, in fact, a development of an earlier model that was in use in Afghanisten by the U.K. army for several years. It’s probable that the same abilities of that earlier model were crucial to the decision to purchase that upgraded model.