St Pete scientists test mobile phone-controlled drone

ST PETERSBURG, December 22 (Itar-Tass) - Natalya Granichina and
Konstantin Amelin, post-graduates of mathematics from St Petersburg State
University have abandoned science laboratories for a while and made a
successful debut in the field of small-scale aviation. They tested a new
drone aircraft controlled by means of a multifunctional mobile phone
mathematical programme devised by them.
In spring this year the post-graduates received a grant of one million
roubles from the Start programme of the Bortnik Foundation (the one to
promote the development of small-scale enterprises in the science and
technology sphere).
The drone has been developed on the basis of a light glider. Its wing
span is two metres; weight is two kilogrammes; payload is half a
kilogramme, speed up to 60 km an hour, and range of flying -- 200 km.
The flying vehicle is provided with an electric motor, a miniature
video camera, and an onboard microcomputer which functions under the
control of the Linux operation system. The microcomputers of various
vehicles maintain contact among them resultant of an inbuilt radio
receiver. The microcomputers in drones can simultaneously receive and send
information out to one another.
The relevance of these vehicles in Russia is hard to overestimate.
They can be applied in prospecting for economic minerals, in a search for
missing ice fishing enthusiasts, the monitoring and forecasting of
industrial disasters, and a routine patrolling of forest tracts. Drone
controlling requires supercalculations with a huge amount of initial data
that are downlinked online.
An official in the pro-rector service of the University has emphasized
in an Itar-Tass interview that the development of a control system for the
drone is "an innovative area of research by the Sprint inter-departmental
laboratory which has been organized in partnership with the Intel Company
and which engages in the development of mobile supplements to Intel
processors.
The Bortnik Foundation is a state-run non-profit organization which
was established by the RF government decision dated February 3, 1994. This
is one of three state-run science foundations. The Bortnkik Foundation
receives 1.5 percent of resources from the Federal budget for science. The
bulk of the Foundation's resources is used for scientific research and
experimental design projects.
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