"ROBOTICS: Tomorrow's aircraft flies without flaps"

European aerospace researchers have shown the first prototype of a planned "flapless" unmanned air vehicle. Similar to a remote-controlled U.S. Predator drone, the prototype UAV is an early milestone for the five-year Flapless Air Vehicle Integrated Industrial Research (Flaviir) project, which aims to produce a fully autonomous UAV with no moving control surfaces by 2009. The completely smooth, teardrop-shaped black exterior of the envisioned autonomous craft will also be fully shielded against electromagnetic pulse (EP) attacks, whether from lightning strikes or nearby nuclear bombs, planners said. All aircraft today use control surfaces--flaps--to turn, dive and climb. By using using streams of air to control direction in its UAV, the Flaviir effort intends to take computer control one step beyond fly-by-wire aircraft, aiming at com- pletely autonomous operation (see www.flaviir.com). The goal is a low-cost, maintenance-free UAV that will fly at least as well as conventional aircraft.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=184417252