Micro air vehicle

The RQ-16 T-Hawk, a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), flies over a simulated combat area during an operational test flight.
A simulation screenshot of a "bumblebee-sized" MAV proposed by the U.S. Air Force in 2008[1]

A micro air vehicle (MAV), or micro aerial vehicle, is a class of man-portable miniature UAVs whose size enables them to be used in low-altitude, close-in support operations.[2] Modern MAVs can be as small as 5 centimeters - compare Nano Air Vehicle. Development is driven by commercial, research, government, and military organizations;[citation needed] with insect-sized aircraft reportedly expected in the future.[3] The small craft allow remote observation of hazardous environments or of areas inaccessible to ground vehicles. Hobbyists have designed MAVs[4] for applications such as aerial robotics contests and aerial photography.[5] MAVs can offer autonomous modes of flight.[6]

  1. ^ US Air Force Flapping Wing Micro Air Vehicle – YouTube
  2. ^ "Micro Air Vehicle". ScienceDirect. Archived from the original on August 6, 2023. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
  3. ^ Compare: Klaptocz, Adam; Nicoud, Jean-Daniel (23 October 2009). "Technology and Fabrication of Ultralight Micro-Aerial Vehicles". In Floreano, Dario; Zufferey, Jean-Christophe; Srinivasan, Mandyam V.; Ellington, Charlie (eds.). Flying Insects and Robots. Berlin: Springer. p. 298. ISBN 9783540893936. Retrieved 2 March 2024. The lightest platforms to take flight with a minimum of functionality are below 0.5 g, but researchers dream of flying at insect size. However, many difficulties occur when scaling down existing technologies.
  4. ^ MAV multicopter hobby project "Shrediquette BOLT", http://shrediquette.blogspot.de/p/shrediquette-bolt.html
  5. ^ "The Rise of the Micro Air Vehicle". The Engineer. June 10, 2013. Archived from the original on March 20, 2018. Retrieved March 19, 2018.
  6. ^ Perritt, Henry H.; Sprague, Eliot O. (13 September 2016). Domesticating Drones: The Technology, Law, and Economics of Unmanned Aircraft. Abingdon: Routledge. ISBN 9781317148357. Retrieved 2 March 2024. The amount of time required to learn to fly a microdrone successfully appears, from all the evidence, to be much shorter than the amount of time required to learn to fly a helicopter or airplane. One important reason is the autonomous modes of flight built in to most microdrones.