Society places an extremely high price on the value of human life and injury. Whenever possible, police and paramilitary actions are always directed towards saving as many lives as possible, whether it is the officer, perpetrator, or innocent civilians. Recently, the advent of robotic systems has enabled law enforcement agencies to perform many of the most dangerous aspects of their jobs from relative safety. This is especially true for bomb disposal units but is also gaining acceptance in other areas. An area where small, remotely operated machines may prove effective is in local aerial surveillance. Currently, the only aerial surveillance assets generally available to law enforcement agencies are costly helicopters. Unfortunately, most of the recently developed unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) are directed towards military applications and have limited civilian use. Systems Planning and Analysis, Inc. (SPA) has conceived and performed a preliminary analysis of a low-cost, inflatable, lighter-than-air surveillance system that may be used in a number of military and law enforcement surveillance situations. The preliminary analysis includes the concept definition, a detailed trade study to determine the optimal configuration of the surveillance system, high-pressure inflation tests, and a control analysis. This paper provides the details in these areas of the design and provide an insight into the feasibility of such a system.
Low-cost, inflatable, lighter-than-air surveillance system for civilian applications
2002
11 Seiten, 5 Quellen
Conference paper
English
Beautiful balloons - Lighter-than-air surveillance operations
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