As long as it flies

Novel Rescue Assistance

With their search and rescue drone Nora, or Novel Rescue Assistance, the team of Eline Bakker wants to save lives of mountaineers. Bakker and her colleagues designed a hybrid vertical take-off and landing drone with a wing span of 1,5 meters that is capable of hovering and flying with a cruise speed of more than hundred kilometers per hour . The drone searches for missing people and casualties by sweeping the area with infrared and optical cameras. It can drop a survival package with food, water, a sleeping bag a telephone and a first aid kit. The team wants to start a company to further develop the drone.

Low orbit earth observation

Ricardo Diaz and his team members designed a nano satellite for low orbit earth observation. “We devised it for an altitude of 350 kilometers. At that altitude a little camera should suffice to take good pictures of the planet.”

Yet at the same time the altitude causes problems because there is still some atmosphere which causes lift, drag and corresponding moments that inevitably lead to instability. To make sure the satellite is stable enough to take sharp pictures, Diaz and his colleagues equipped the satellite with a flywheel.

Airplane without flaps

Wing flaps cause drag, can break and need maintenance. But they are indispensable. Or are they? Niels Waars believes planes can do without. He and his team members designed a little unmanned airplane with plasma actuators in its wings. Two long electrodes made of dielectric material run along trough the wings. By putting a high voltage on these electrodes the air around the wings ionizes and this changes the airflow. Thus by playing with the voltage one can make the plane ascend or descend.