Tethered Air

Crazy Falling Man on a Loose Rope Stunt Shows How Physics Works Here’s the idea: A man is going to be attached to a rope and then fall. The rope is totally loose and not attached to anything but there will be a weight rigged to the opposite end of the rope (the other end holds the man, remember). What happens? Does the man fall straight down? Nope! The rope swings around and tightens itself around the pole saving the man from plummeting to the ground. Duh.

At the AUVSI conference in 2013, Tethered Air presented a white paper on the concept of catching large UAS from small surface combatants, enabled by a towed parafoil - with a single-tethered system being the simplest iteration. We also suggested a dual use for that system as an ISR and comm relay position, and DARPA's TERN and TALONS projects have done exactly those two things. DARPA is now funding the Gremlins project, considered by many to be a "UAS mothership". In that same presentation, we also showed a related system that would enable parasitic UAS operations from unmodified cargo aircraft. Atmospherically-suspended cabled robotics have enormous potential in both the military and commercial worlds; we see an extraordinary future.

Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) Prototype Demonstration DARPA’s Towed Airborne Lift of Naval Systems (TALONS) research effort recently demonstrated a prototype of a low-cost, fully automated parafoil system design...

Johnny 5 is ALIVE!!!!!

"When we look back at how we used to see the future, what’s so laughable isn't that we over-imagined what was impossible - it's that we under-imagined what was possible."